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Tag: Leading by Example

  • Elon Musk’s Out of This World Ambition

    Elon Musk’s Out of This World Ambition

    Beyond Earth: Elon Musk’s Bold Vision for Humanity’s Future.

    Elon’s mission to colonize Mars is amazingly ambitious and incredibly important.

    Making human life multi-planetary by colonizing Mars is much more than a business decision for Musk, even though SpaceX is a thriving business.

    The mission of SpaceX is focused on the future of humanity:

    “I think it’s important that humanity become a multi-planet species. I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event. That’s really why I started SpaceX.”

    In Ashlee Vance’s biography on Musk, Elon reveals that he wishes to establish a Mars colony by 2040, with a population of 80,000.

    He’s well on his way.

    Elon Musk’s companies employ many tens of thousands, with: 

    • Neuralink (hundreds),
    • Tesla leading (around 120k-140k employees, fluctuating), followed by 
    • SpaceX (13,000+), 
    • X/Twitter (significantly reduced, aiming for ~100), 
    • xAI (1,200+),
    • The Boring Company (~200)

    Totaling well over 100,000 individuals across his major ventures, with Tesla being the largest employer. (December 2025)

    It’s not just the quantity of these teams that matters, it’s the quality. Elon has been able to assemble strong engineering talent partially because his goal is the biggest goal in the world. And big goals help attract skilled talent.

    How many will a Mars settlement take?

    Likely this will be determined by how well humanoid robots are able to go there and make the living buildings we will need to survive.

    A Moon Base alpha is also in the cards. The future is getting more exciting fast.

    Mars will be determined by the strength of the technology we amass and the Starships leaving Earth with a blast.

  • Use What You Have, Do What You Can

    Within the space of a decade Elon went from being an immigrant to the United States, sleeping in his office and showering at the YMCA, to being a dot com multi-millionaire taking delivery of a million dollar McLaren Supercar.

    Elon used what he had, did what he could, and it worked for him.

    “At the beginning we had one computer which would be the web server during the day and then at night I’d program on it.  And we’d sleep in the office.

    It was cheaper to rent the office than to rent an apartment so we just rented the office and slept in the office and showered at the YMCA.”

    Elon was born in South Africa but it didn’t stop him from moving to Canada, and then to America and Silicon Valley to be a part of the dot com boom.

    Maybe you are starting out from a humble beginning.  When I started my first online website I started it from my bedroom while in University and living at home with my parents…

    Yet despite my humble beginning I grew my blog into a success to the tune of thousands of visitors a day.

    If you have a laptop and an Internet connection a world of awesome potential awaits you.

    Dream big, work hard and act boldly, because these days more than ever: When there is a will there often is a way.

  • Seeing is Believing

    Why would Elon Musk choose to sleep on the factory floor you might ask?

    Because while he was asking Tesla employees to work around the clock to achieve company goals he was right there with them.

    Elon on the factory floor by Grok

    Elon leads by example.

    Leading by example is a powerful way to lead.

    When Elon needs to stay at a factory to get something done he stays and will get the work done.

    On a Clubhouse app audio recording Elon shared how he slept on the factory floor, with the smell of iron filings in the air, because he wanted Tesla employees to see him there giving it his all for Tesla and the team…

    Those who have seen Elon sleeping on a factory floor have witnessed Elon’s level of work ethos.

    Seeing is believing.

    But if you see something online you should be more careful with thinking what you see happened in real life. Image in this post is made by Elon’s Ai company Grok.