What can we learn from Elon Musk?

He is one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is not only famous for his innovations in different fields and his wealth but is also very much well known for the way he thinks and his vision to help humanity.

At the young age of 12, he developed a game called Blaster and sold it for $500. He sold his first company – Zip2 in the year 1999 which provided online newspapers with maps and directories at the cost of $307 million. Musk also co-founded x.com which is now known as PayPal was acquired by eBay for a whopping cost of $1.5 billion.

Elon Musk is keen on developing – Sustainable energy, clean transportation, and interplanetary space travel. With so many achievements it is worth knowing about this visionary person and learning a few lessons from him.

• Never Stop Learning

According to Elon Musk’s brother, Elon would read two books per day of various disciplines in his early teenage years. If you read, one book a month, Elon has read as many as 60 books in one month.

His intensive reading has given him ideas, which helped him to raise the grand business empire that he has today. He also believes that everything can be self-taught. An example of this can be seen when Musk visited Russia, for seeking help in designing rockets for his company- SpaceX. He wasn’t taken seriously by the Russian Scientists, which made him learn it on his own, while he was returning home.

• Learn the fundamentals

Musk believes in the famous quote by Albert Einstein  – “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” 

Tesla Energy created battery packs that have enough power to sustain home needs. This was only possible when Elon Musk questioned and made the impossible possible. The engineers believed that exiting batteries cannot store such a large amount of energy, but some tweaks and research brought in the revolutionary change in the sustainable and clean energy industry.

Do not just go with the thinking that – “That’s just how it is and how it’s always been.”, make ‘why’ as your favorite question, dig deep into the fundamentals and use that knowledge to your benefit.

• Work Super Hard

Elon Musk once said in an interview – “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”.

There are no shortcuts to success, he works twice as hard as any one of us and has a very strong work ethic. Despite his success, he still works around 14 hours a day.

• Have a Strong Focus

All Great leaders believe in having a strong focus. Stephan Covey said- “Focus on what matters, ignore the rest.” Musk follows the same principle. In his companies, he never put money in marketing, whereas all the focus is on Engineering, Design, Manufacturing, and Research. He focuses on having the best product.

He said – “Will this activity result in a better product? If not, stop those efforts.”

• Seek criticism

Elon Musk believes that Self Improvement is a lifelong process. He once gave a piece of business advice – “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”

We all seek constant validation or compliments from people, it does bring contentment but does not help you improve in any way. The lesson we learn here is to embrace criticism and ask people what they don’t like about things.

• Persistence pays

 

Musk says- “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”

 Things fail only when you give up. One must persist for achieving success. SpaceX was a risky business move, but Elon once invested $100 million from his funds to keep it afloat.

• Accept failures and have a contingency plan

We often avoid taking risks because of the fear of failure. We should rather acknowledge the fear and plan how we can handle it.

Before Elon Musk started SpaceX, he set a spending limit to $100 million. He said if we are not successful till the time, we reach our spending limit we will close the company. The first two rocket launches of SpaceX cost 90 million and it failed, but the last that cost 10 million was a success. This successful rocket launch got SpaceX a contract of $1.6 billion from NASA for 12 supply flights.

“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” –  Elon Musk

• Quality over Quantity in hiring

Few companies hire several people to tackle a difficult problem, but two people who don’t know something aren’t better than the one who knows things well.

A large group with incompetence will result in the utilization of precious resources with no result.

Musk suggests hiring efficiently and finding the right talent for the job.

• Employees: Talent vs Personality 

Apart from a person’s talent, an employee’s contribution to a company is how they are as an individual and how they affect others around them. Hire people with good personalities, a bad employee can be detrimental to a team and company at large.

• Think beyond money

If you build a product that can help humanity, the money will be a by-product of it. Elon says, never make it an aim to earn money rather focus on creating a thing that can make a difference to the people.

Musk has often said in his interviews that he focuses on improving the world rather than improving his own life.

We are often so self-involved in excelling in our job and life as a whole, we seldom ignore doing good for others.

Conclusion

Elon musk is truly a one-of-a-kind person, his wisdom and lessons are worth applying in our day-to-day routine. Though he had lots of hurdles in his life it didn’t stop him from becoming a billionaire and building a business empire that changed the world.

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