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What are the secrets of Elon Musk’s success in the business world? Some have even described him as a “Reckless Billionaire” and others said he is a “Space Catcher”. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, is ranked as one of the world’s richest men. He has a net worth of over $190 billion which exceeds the foreign exchange reserves of 7 countries combined, namely “Turkey, Italy, Lebanon, Argentina, Tunisia, Netherlands, and Greece”. So what makes Elon Musk the person he is today?
Musk has built a fortune through incredible career-launching pioneering companies from electric cars to rockets to online payments to solar power. When others said it could not happen, he decided to embark on a new adventure to establish a company, “SpaceX,” to launch space trips.
In this article, you will see that Musk adopts special rituals and customs that he follows, which impact on his personality and make him one of the world’s most successful businessmen. These insights will help you answer a very interesting question; “How to become a genius like Elon Musk”:
1. Don’t Make Money Your Only Goal
This is the principle that Musk builds on his vision of business and commerce. He does not estimate the size of his fortune. He considers himself more an engineer than an investor and his motivation for work is his desire to solve technical problems. As he says, “I am not amassing money somewhere. I only own a certain number of shares in (Tesla), (SpaceX) and (Solar City), and these shares have a market value.” Although Musk does not express any objection to the pursuit of wealth, he believes that money is not the motivation that encourages him to achieve this success, “as long as you adhere to the values and ethical principles.”
It seems that this principle has paid off. Over the past year, his company’s shares have risen to a new record, and the company’s market value exceeded $700 billion. At the same time, Musk, who turned 50 this year, does not expect to die from work. He says he hopes to spend most of his money building a human colony on Mars, and he would not be surprised if the project had exhausted his entire fortune. He even thinks, like Bill Gates, that the failure to spend these billions deposited in banks before death is a sign of failure because it means he did not use them for worthwhile goals.
For him, success is not measured by the money he has in the banks but by the number of technical issues that he can solve. Musk knows that every hurdle he bypasses will help all companies looking for solutions to the same problems. He announced that he would authorize others to exploit the patents he had registered in electric vehicle manufacturing technology. He would not sue anyone who wanted to use them to accelerate the development of electric cars worldwide.
2. Let Your Passion Take You Places
Musk’s aspirations may reveal to Mars the secrets of his success. He says, “if you are looking for a better future, you need to see exciting things happen that make life better.” Elon Musk founded the company “SpaceX” because he found that the US space program, is not ambitious enough.
He said in one of his interviews: “I was waiting impatiently to explore the depths of space and send a person to Mars to establish a human base on the moon, and to travel back and forth to orbit.” When he was tired of waiting, he had the idea of a “Mars Oasis Mission” to send a small greenhouse to the red planet. The idea was to spark people’s interest in space and stimulate the US government to increase NASA’s space budget.
Musk realized that the problem was not the lack of ability to travel to space, but rather the means to get us there because space technology was too expensive. Hence, came the idea to establish a company to launch missiles and explore space at relatively lower prices.
3. Don’t Say “No” to Risks
Investors usually risk large sums of money to achieve high returns, but Musk took risks beyond what most entrepreneurs would accept.
In 2002, he sold stakes in his first two projects, Zip2 Internet City Directory and PayPal online payment platform. At 30 years old and with a fortune of $200 million, he decided to invest half his fortune in new projects and keep the other half in banks.
His companies faced all kinds of problems that may be encountered in the launching stage. At SpaceX, missile launch tests failed three times in a row, and Tesla ran into production, supply chain, and design problems. Then, the global financial crisis occurred, and Musk faced a tough choice between keeping the money and sacrificing companies, or spending the rest of his fortune to save his companies from collapse.”
Musk spent vast sums of money on his companies that he borrowed from his friends to pay his living expenses. And through it all, he was not afraid of the specter of bankruptcy. In one of his remarks, he said “I would have had to educate my children in public schools. What’s the problem? I studied in public schools”.
4. Ignore The Critics
In the times when Musk’s companies faltered, the happiness of experts and commentators was shocking. It seemed that people wished him to fail, perhaps because they interpreted his ambition as vanity. However, this has never shaken him or stopped him from achieving his goals.
Musk advises indifference to the critics. He says that he never expected “SpaceX” or “Tesla” to generate significant profits when he founded them, and no one expected that either. And if he’d listened to them, he wouldn’t have made it this far.
The reason he doesn’t care how people look at him or their mockery is that all that occupies him is the pursuit of important goals. This simplifies his decision-making process, as it focuses all his energies on plans that he believes are useful to the world.
5. Enjoy Your Life
Musk is known to revere the work. He takes pride in working 120 hours a week to meet the demands of his work, but he still enjoys his life!
He considers sleep essential to fulfill his daily accomplishments, and he strives to stay a great father; spending time with his kids, taking them when he is out of town, and going on annual camping trips.
Meanwhile, he considers playing video games, seeing friends, listening to music, and watching movies a common theme in his life.
So, in conclusion, if you are wondering how to become like Elon Musk, combining these tips with hard work, you might be as successful and wealthy.
