To achieve a goal it helps to believe you can achieve it.
After Elon’s first big success (Selling Zip2 to Compaq) he was featured in a CNN video about dot com millionaires.
The video shows a young Elon (In his late 20’s) accepting delivery of his one million dollar McLaren F1, one of only 62 in the world.
The best part about the video is the ending of the video where 28 year old Elon says: “I’d like to be on the cover of the Rolling Stone. That’d be cool.”
Oh, and by the way, Elon Has made it to the cover of Rolling Stone multiple times…
He’s also made it onto Time Magazine as man of the year and on numerous other magazine covers as well.
He cut his own hair for the image that made it to the cover of Time.
Elon’s dreams remind me of the Goethe quote: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
— “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”
If your chores stack up too high your stress will mount and your success will dwindle…
So don’t let that be you.
Make sure you do what you need to do to ensure healthy operation of the enterprise you are operating.
“I’d love to just do innovation and just do engineering but alot of life in general and any job you have to do your chores…
I think to be successful at almost anything you have to do the tough stuff as well as the enjoyable stuff. You have to do the boring stuff as well as the non-boring stuff. And if you don’t do your chores then bad things will happen…
Like it’s more fun to cook the meal than to clean the dishes, but you need to clean the dishes. You need to do both.”
Do what is absolutely necessary and in doing so you will afford yourself the ability to enjoy the arbitrary.
Elon Musk on Profit: It’s Proof You’re Adding Real Value
In his Kahn academy interview with Sal Kahn Elon said:
“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with profit, in fact profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you are doing than you are spending to create it…
And that’s a good thing. If that’s not the case then you would be out of business and rightfully so because you’re not adding enough value.”
So add more value. Stack on bonuses. Strengthen your offer by finding ways to improve your product.
Elon explains by investing in his own companies it becomes easier to ask others to do the same.
In a Milken Institute Interview Elon was asked: “You put a lot of your eggs in one basket. Would you advise entrepreneurs to roll the bones quite the way you did?”
Elon: “Yeah absolutely! I think it’s worth investing your own capital in what you do. I don’t believe in the sort of other people’s money thing…
I think if you’re not willing to put your own assets at stake then you shouldn’t ask other people to do that.”
Elon is all in with having skin in the game.
By investing more of his own money into growing his businesses Elon has more invested, and more reasons to stay focused on fully optimizing the businesses he is invested in.
When you are willing to invest everything into your businesses you have every reason to make it work.
Find a noble reason beyond profit to make your business work – and this will likely boost your profitability.
SpaceX is currently the most profitable rocket company but at one point they had never sent a rocket to orbit and were running deep in the red.
But they pulled through and made it to orbit with the fourth launch!
So why take the risk? Elon explains his bigger than money motive:
“Now is the first time in the history of Earth the windows has opened where it is possible for us to extend life to another planet…the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can.” (AGU)
It’s not about the odds of success as much as it is about the importance of the mission: “If something is important enough, then you should do it anyway.”
Having a super human mission is the superhuman effort realized to help achieve it.
Elon has developed a reputation for delivering on his promises, no matter how bold they might be.
His promises might not always be delivered on time…but Elon gets the job done and gets it done well.
Hard work and doing what you saywill earn you the trust of others.
Honesty is one of the most important life skills and directly influences how much trust you will receive.
Elon’s Body Language Speaks Volumes
Elon communicates very honestly and his body language adds another layer of meaning to what he says. Your communication has to do with your body language too.
If you are watching a video of Elon try emulating his motions as he speaks to gain greater awareness of how he communicates.
Elon – though he may glorify a story for maximizing its effectiveness – seems to do so from a place of honesty and genuine good intent.
Elon is a shining example of how honest communication – both in words and body language – leads to trust, power, and success.
Being willing to change your mind when new information is presented is a sign of a strong mind.
Stubbornly clinging to an idea that starts to appear inferior is a strategy that will start to render diminishing results.
When it comes to changing his mind two examples from Elon come to mind.
First is the old idea Tesla had of swapping out battery packs, for a faster charging experience. At one point Tesla was going in this direction, but they decided to abandon it as faster charging solutions have emerged.
Another more recent example is when Elon released a song about NFT’s as an NFT.
As you can see in the tweet above, Elon changed his mind.
Turns out NFT’s like the bored ape yacht club lost a ton of value. Elon was on point with under valuing NFT’s. They lack the intrinsic value and can be copied too easily in my opinion. They have lost around ~10X or more of their value since their peak.
Changing your mind might seem counterintuitive to other advice Elon gives, namely his praise for persistence.
Elon clarifies: “Yeah I think absolutely persistence is extremely important. You should not give up unless you’re forced to give up.
That principle can be misapplied if you happen to be trying to penetrate a brick wall with your head, you know, so you need to be cautious in always saying one should always persist and never give up because there are actually times when you should give up because you’re doing something in error.”
So the lesson of this segment is: Don’t be afraid to change your mind if the path you are on proves to be unpowerful.
Changing your mind when presented with more new information simply makes sense. Remaining unphased by new information is a sign of ignorance.
Don’t let others try to paint your ability to upgrade or change your decisions as a weakness. Because it is a strength.
When contemplating the meaning of life Elon found answers that resonated with him within one of his favorite books of all time: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
In the book Douglas points out: “One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask.”
Elon used this insight as a stepping stone to answer the question “What is the meaning of life?” He said:
“I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.“
Certainly striving for greater enlightenment is an excellent answer.
In Douglas Adams’ book the answer 42 is the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything.
Questioning the current state of things and how they can be improved is the starting point of all innovation.
Change is the most enduring constant so in order to have consistently relevant answers the questions we ask must change over time as well.
Better questions lead to better answers, so never stop questioning how to make the world around you better.
Also be sure to ask yourself on an ongoing basis: “What are the best actions I can execute on to make progress and improve my life?”
Having a monthly system of measurable objectives and key results is a great way to make progress on an ongoing basis.
How Elon Musk Masters the Art of Getting People Excited
Getting plenty of people excited about what you are working for is powerful for producing organic marketing opportunities.
Elon is a master of influencing public opinion.
At STVP Future Fest he explained:
“If you’re trying to convince the public to do something, then you have to think “OK, what’s the message?
What’s going to get them really excited?”
Part of this strategy is obvious in the exciting events SpaceX, Tesla and Elon put on with every rocket or product launch.
Elons brother Kimbal manages a company called Nova sky stories which puts on drone shows for many events. Tesla events and many others are put on by Nova Sky Stories and I look forward to seeing one of them for myself in real life.
Here’s a screen caption of the Tesla logo in the sky.
Excitement Built in the Products:
And anyone who has driven a Tesla can attest to the exciting feeling of instant acceleration when you drive it.
Elon’s companies have a feeling of the future about them. It is fun to be a part of it.
With Tesla’s the horn can be customized as well. You could turn it into a whoopie cushion if you wanted.
The cars can “dance” with their lights if you want them to.
And anyone who has driven a Tesla can attest to the exciting feeling of instant acceleration when you drive it.
Tesla Plaid’s are the fastest 0-60 production cars on Earth so this effect really hypes some people up.
It is called “The Tesla Effect” and gets people excited without fail.
With SpaceX anyone near Starbase can watch a rocket launch if they want to. It’s located right near a major highway and they launch multiple times per week usually.
Elon says it seems like we are at the beginning of the big bang of intelligence. It will be interesting to see where the advances in the coming years will take us.
Starship’s first mission to Mars is scheduled for 2026.
Elon has personally been involved in the interviews of the first 3,000 SpaceX employees. Certainly he’s learned a thing or two in the process.
At the World Government Summit Elon was asked “How do you choose your team?”
Elon replied: “I suppose honestly it tends to be gut feel more than anything else…
So when I interview somebody my interview questions are always the same. I say: ‘Tell me the story of your life’
And the decisions you made along the way and why you made them.
Also: ‘Tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them’ and that question I think is very important because the people that really solved the problem they know exactly how they solved it.
They know the little details. And the people who pretended to know how to solve the problem can maybe go one level and then they get stuck.”
Nonetheless small and strong is often superior to large and clunky.
Or as Elon would say: “A small group of very technically strong people will always beat a large group of moderately strong people.”
And when people have good things to say this helps with sales.
The best product often wins so you need to be hyper-focused on making your product (and service) as magical as possible.
Elon says:
“The thing I really focus on at Tesla is we’re going to pour
all the money and attention into trying to make the product as compelling as possible…
Because I think the way to sell anything is really via word of mouth.
The key is to have a product the people love. Generally people if they are at a party or with friends or whatever you’ll talk about the things that you love…
But if you just like something, it’s okay, you’re not going to care that much but if you love something you’re going to talk. And that will generate word of mouth and that’s basically how our sales have grown like we’re not spending money on advertising or endorsements…
So anyone who buys our car they just bought it because they like the car and you know it’s genuine.”
So many parts of a Tesla are true engineering magic, so much so even a vehicle from a decade ago seems old school by comparison. The more engineering magic you can pack into a product it seems, the better.
In Forbes (March 26th, 2012) Elon said:
“If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic…so engineering is magic, and who wouldn’t want to be a magician?”
“As long as people stay super focused on creating the absolutely best product or service that really delights their end customer…
Stay focused on that (because) basically if you get it such that your customers want you to succeed then you probably will…
If your customers love you your odds of success are dramatically higher.”
At InvestHK Elon said: “Really focus on a product your customers love. It’s so rare that you can buy a product and you love the product when you bought it. There are very few things that fit into that category…
If you can come up with something like that your business will be successful for sure.”
Tesla produces cars that save plenty of lives and produce plenty of happiness. So it’s no surprise they have plenty of sales as an outcome of their efforts. Sales that continue to rise.
And now SpaceX is delighting not only astronauts and the SpaceX team…they are also delighting civilian crews (led by ultra-wealthy benefactors for now) on trips around the earth.
Jared Isaacman and his crew of 4 recently splashed down in the ocean after three days in orbit around earth. And setting a record for the first time three Dragon capsules have been in orbit simultaneously.
Soon SpaceX will be doing a civilian lunar tourism trip around the moon called “dearMoon” with Japanese benefactor Yusaku Maezawa.
The dearMoon mission will take place on a larger spaceship (Starship) and will take Maezawa, 8 civilians, and one or two crew members around the dark side of the moon.
An artist did this rendering of a floating violinist playing for the dearMoon audience in space. Undoubtedly the show will be a delight.
Whether it’s Tesla vehicles, SpaceX rockets, The Boring Company flamethrowers or any other awesome company he’s involved with you can be sure as long as Elon is calling the shots the fantastic products his engineering teams bring to light will continue to delight.
