.20 Life Lessons Of Genius.
🌷" Elon Musk "🌷
Lesson 1: Even the most unlikely goals can be achieved as long as you try.
These early successes were frequently marred by a difficult time at a variety of
private schools where the small, quiet boy was frequently tormented by
classmates. The bullying grew so severe at one point that a number of other boys
actually tossed him down a flight of stairs and then proceeded to beat him so
badly that he was hospitalized soon after.
Musk’s parents divorced in 1980 and after that he primarily lived with his father
all around South Africa. When Musk was a teenager, Apartheid was still therule of the day in South Africa and around this time the South African military
was actively working on silencing opposition. Military service was mandatory
and Musk, anxious to avoid such things began looking for a way out.
Anxious to be a part of the burgeoning US tech scene, as well as avoid military
service, Musk decided to head for the United States as soon as he graduated
from secondary school at the age of 17. This dream was deferred for a time as he
initially had trouble gaining entry to the country. Not to be deterred, however,
Musk instead moved to Canada in 1989, taking advantage of his mother’s
Canadian heritage to gain entry to the country.
Lesson 2: If the shortest path to your goal is unobtainable, finding a
workaround then becomes the shortest path to success.
Not out of the woods yet, Musk took his Canadian citizenry and moved to
Montreal where he spent a year nearly destitute, saving what he could to prepare
for college and working a string of menial jobs to scrape by. During this time
Musk took any job he could find, he shoveled grain bins, tended vegetables, cut
logs and even cleaned the boiler room at a saw mill. This job was extremely
dangerous and required the use of a hazmat suit. Nevertheless, Musk toughed it
out, one of only a handful of new hires to do so.
Lesson 3: Planning for your dreams is not enough, you must be willing to
dedicate yourself to the idea of success.
The next year he managed to gain entrance to Queens University in Ontario
where he then studied for two years. During this time, Musk was reunited with
his mother and his younger brother and future business partner Kimbal. When he
wasn’t studying, he and Kimbal would read the newspaper to discover
interesting locals that they wanted to meet. The pair would then take turns
calling the objects of their interest to see if they could meet for lunch.
This ultimately lead to an internship for Musk who one day had called up the
then-head of the Bank of Nova Scotia. The bank president, Peter Nicholson, was
impressed by the two young men’s request and had lunch with them some six
months later when his schedule allowed. From the resulting meeting, Nicholson
was so impressed that he offered Musk an internship for the following summer.
Lesson 4: Perseverance is extremely important in order to achieve your goals.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Musk was already planning for the future, even at the age of 18, so much so that
Nicholson’s daughter can still remember a conversation they had about electric
cars at Musk’s eighteenth birthday a few months after the scheduled lunch.
Lesson 5: It is never too early to start planning the steps required to achieve
your goals.In 1992, Musk’s original dream finally came to fruition, his time at Queens
University had set him apart as a phenomenal student and he was able to move
to the United States after earning a scholarship to the University of
Pennsylvania. Musk’s time in Pennsylvania was fruitful, the next year he earned
his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and the following year, earned on in
Economics as well.
Lesson 6: Hard work and perseverance can be combined to achieve even the
most unlikely things.
During this time, Musk experienced a bought of depression and turned to a wide
variety of religious and philosophical texts in order to make sense of his
struggle. Ultimately, however, the greatest insight came from the science fiction
classic by Douglas Adams titled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In this
book the meaning of life is revealed to be the number 42. This seemingly
meaningless answer allowed Musk to realize the importance of asking the right
questions, which set him on his unique path through life.
Lesson 7: It doesn’t matter where you take your inspiration from, as long as
the lessons you take from it are the right ones.
The question he asked: What would have the greatest impact on humanity as a
whole. The answer he came up with: space colonization, renewable energy and
the internet. Two of the answers he has currently helped revolutionize, he is
working on the third.While at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk met another future Silicon Valley
resident in Adeo Ressi. The two became fast friends and even went in together to
rent a large, 10-bedroom home that had once belonged to a fraternity to use as a
local nightclub for they and their friends.
After leaving the University of Pennsylvania, Musk moved to California to start
work on a doctorate program at Stanford University in the field of applied
physics. Just two days into his time at Stanford, Musk famously told a professor
that he was in California to start an internet company, he just wanted the
Stanford program as a fallback. Musk left Stanford soon after to start his first
company Zip2, four years later he would be a millionaire.
Lesson 8: No matter how certain success appears, it is always in your best
interest to have a plan B.
Zip2 and X.com
“I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the
rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be
quite valuable in the end.” – Elon Musk”
Shortly before he decided to leave Stanford, Musk watch as the nascent
Netscape Communications, started by a man younger than he was, quadruple in
value the instant it went public. This was the catalyst that proved to him the
internet was the place to be. At this point, Musk had little more than a car,
$2,000 in a bank account and few local friends to speak of. Nevertheless, he
believed in himself and was confident enough to drop out of Stanford after less
than 48 hours.
Lesson 9: It is important to take the time to notice emerging trends so as tobest capitalize on them when the time is right.
Finally, free of school and in the land of internet startups, Musk brought his
brother Kimbal out to California in 1995 and the two promptly started work on a
software company called Zip2. Started with a $28,000 loan from their father, the
set about creating a city guide for use by newspaper publishers. The company
came about after Musk met the people at a digital mapping company named
Navteq.
Musk convinced Navteq to let him use their maps online before buying a
CDROM directory of local businesses. Musk’s programing skills then allowed
him to write a small amount of code which then connected the business directory
to the map to show search results based on predetermined criteria. Not long after
he was already courting several major local newspapers and offering his service
through their websites.
Lesson 10: It doesn’t matter what the origins of a good idea are, the best ideas
always rise to the top.
This was the early days of the internet, and the medium was expanding rapidly,
Zip2 was essentially an early digital yellow pages and Musk marketed it as a
way to provide newspapers with a valid reason for existing in the digital space.
The original Zip2 offices were in a rundown office that served as both company
headquarters and living space for the Musk brothers. The ceiling leaked, even
after a liberal application of caulk, and for the first few months the only furniture
was a pair of futons and a small table for Musk’s computer.
Lesson 11: In order to achieve success, you must be willing to make sacrifices
in the short term
Musk’s computer even served double duty, serving as his programing station by
night, and server to run Zip2 functions during the day. The server initially ran
over a dialup modem before Musk punched a hole in the floor and connected to
a conveniently located internet service provider directly.
By 1996, Zip2 had come to the attention of a local venture capital firm who
offered the nascent company 3 million dollars in funding. In exchange, Musk
had to give up the role of CEO to a man named Richard Sorkin who had an
MBA from Stanford. Sorkin expanded the company, landing contracts with the
likes of the New York Times and the Chicago Sun. To Musk’s chagrin he also
sought investment money from major newspapers as well.
Lesson 12: Sometimes to realize our dreams we need to let go and learn from
those who have more experience than us.
As such, Musk watched while other companies such as Yahoo! moved towards
the future while, in his view, Zip2 was stuck in the past. This continued until
1998 when Musk found himself with just 7 percent of the total amount of Zip2
stock. Despite founding a successful internet startup, he was now in a Vice
President position with little actual power and could do nothing but watch what
remained be slowly chipped away.
The final straw came later that same year when Sorkin tried to sell the company
to another search engine company called Citysearch in an effort to create a
nationwide local search engine, a move which Musk decided he could not stand
for. Striking back internally, he spread his message of revolt inside the company
until a majority of the managers were behind him and threatening to quit if
Sorkin was not removed from power and the merger squashed.
Lesson 13: It is important to always know your limits and remain true to
yourself first and foremost.
While Musk wanted to be reinstated as CEO, the majority of the board was
comprised of those on the side of the newspapers and after a lengthy battle,
Derek Proudian of Mohr Davidow’s was installed instead.
Lesson 14: Even when things appear to be going your way, it is important to
never count your chickens before they’re hatched.
While this initially seemed to be mostly what Musk wanted, the results
ultimately ended up with the company being sold to Compaq soon after.
Compaq ultimately paid over $300 million for Zip2, the largest amount ever paid
for an internet company at the time. This left Musk with $22 million in his
pocket and somewhat of a chip on his shoulder.
Compaq purchased the company with the goal of making its AltaVista searchengine, a long dead Google competitor, more competitive in the even then
already crowded search engine market. At the time, Zip2 provided software for
over 120 newspaper groups around the country.
Despite the apparent success of his company, Musk only ever saw Zip2 as a
failure. When starting out, he had wanted to help shape the internet for the good
of everyone, and instead built software that a dying medium could use to stave
off obsolesce for a few more years. Nevertheless, Musk was ready to try again
and quickly started work on an online platform for financial services designed to
make traditional options obsolete.
Lesson 15: At the end of the day, the perceptions of others don’t matter, you
ultimately determine your own metrics for success and failure.
At the time, Musk had this to say. “What they should have done is put me in
charge…great things will never happen with VCs or professional managers…
they don’t have the creativity or insight.”
By 1999, Musk had the basics of his idea up and running as was ready to pitch
his idea to Sequoia Capital, an investment firm that had help fund things like
Cisco, Apple and Oracle. By the end of the day he had a $25-million-dollar
investment promise to start work on his new project known as X.com.
While Musk’s initial goals for X.com included most if not all of the features
PayPal currently offers, his initial version was scaled back in order to moreadequately focus on the problem of making person to person payments online a
reality using email. Musk soon merged X.com with a competing but similar
company by the name of Confinity.
This merger left Musk in charge and gave him access to the Confinity program
known as PayPal. While the two technologies worked well together, the
Confinity and X.com teams did not merge so easily. In fact, Musk spend the next
10 months trying to keep various visions, personalities and egos under control.
Specifically, Confinity’s founders, Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, found Musk to
be too interested in micromanaging for their liking. This continued to the fall of
2000 when Musk took a two-week trip to meet with potential new investors;
when he returned to work he learned that he had been disposed as CEO.
Lesson 16: No matter the specifics, interpersonal relationships are what truly
lead a business to success or failure.
The X.com board decided to fire Musk and leave Thiel and Levchin in charge.
The company was promptly renamed PayPal. In 2002 the company was
purchased by eBay for a total of $1.5 billion in eBay stock for his share of 11.7
percent of PayPal, Musk was paid over $160 million.
SpaceX
“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Elon Musk
After being ousted as CEO of his second company but before eBay purchased
PayPal, Musk came up with the idea of what became known as Mars Oasis. The
goal of this project was to launch a miniature greenhouse into space that would
ultimately land on Mars with everything needed to grow food on Mars; with a
secondary goal being to rejuvenate interest in the space program.
Lesson 17: Even in the midst of extreme success it is important to always have
an eye on the future.
In search of a way to make this dream a reality, Musk traveled to Russia in
October of 2001 with, among others, Adeo Ressi, to look at intercontinental
ballistic missiles with which to launch the greenhouses. Musk’s reception in
Russia was initially cold however and it was not until 2002 that he was offered a
single ballistic missile for the sum of $8 million a price he found completely
unreasonable.
This led Musk to determine that it would simply be cheaper to start a company
that built rockets capable of flying to Mars which would then give him as many
rockets as he needed. From there, Musk determined that the average cost of a
rocket to build is only 3 percent of what it sells for. Musk doesn’t dream of
going to space simply for something to do, he firmly believes that interplanetary
travel will serve to protect humanity from an extinction level event that he feels
is eventually inevitable.
Lesson 18: When it comes to properly preparing for the future, the logical
answer may not always be the simplest or easiest.
SpaceX was soon formed and Musk determined a process whereby he could
create rockets capable of reaching Mars and still sell them to others at 10 percent
of what the average market value was while still earning a 70 percent profit on
every rocket sold. The stated goal of SpaceX is to turn humanity into a
spacefaring race.
Lesson 19: It doesn’t matter what the field is or how closed off a marketplace
may seem, all it takes is one right idea to turn everything on its head.
With Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) up and running, Musk promptly
sunk more than 50 percent of his eBay payout earnings into the company which
currently creates and develops space launch vehicles with a goal of advancing
modern rocket technology.
Lesson 20: When you know you are on to something, don’t be afraid to bet big.
Prior to getting interested in the Mars Oasis idea, Musk had never studied rocket
science before, but he didn’t let a little thing like the lack of decades of
experience stop him. When he started working with rocket scientist Jim Cantrell
early on in the process, he simply borrowed all of Cantrell’s books on the topic
and read them. Still not satisfied, he went out and hired every single rocket
scientist that would consult with him on the topic so that he could truly learn
everything he could about the field.
Source :-
Elon Musk
The Greatest Lessons Through the
Inspiring Life of Elon Musk - Evander Watson
