The Success Story of Elon Musk

So how many of you heard of Tesla Motors? What about SpaceX? Hyperloop?
Unless you live under a rock without bars chances are you mostly heard of the name Tesla Motors. It is a car company, Electric car company to be specific. This guy we are talking about, Read the title once in case you forgot his name, is the CEO of it and this is his success story.

In Management classes, you may be heard of lecturers saying “we have to think out of the box”. This guy did a Ph.D. on it, guys please stop searching google on “how to do a Ph.D. in Out of the box thinking” I haven’t said it literally.

We watched many sci-fi movies, let’s say Blade Runner, Star Wars, Total Recall and many. In all those movies they projected that the future is all about Air Transport, but this guy is digging a hole in the ground from Los Angeles to San Francisco for High-speed transportation. This time I mean it literally.

Let’s be frank how many of us think of ideas like leaving the Earth and start colonizing on Mars? and how many of us ever thought of reusing an orbital rocket? Forget about out of the box his thoughts are already out of this world.

Elon Musk is the second entrepreneur in silicon valley who created three companies with a market cap of $1 billion or more with PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. But do you know “he got fired as a CEO from his own company”?

Elon Musk Education in South Africa
Being the Firstborn of a South African father and a Canadian mother who got divorced when he was 9 by the way. He is always interested in books. His dad said, “he used to read books even while he was at a party.” He taught himself programming and developed a game at the age of 12 and sold it to a company for a price of $500.”

While he is studying in a school he got bullied by his schoolmates and got beaten up severely until he is blacked out and then he hospitalized. His childhood is a difficult one because the other kids used to mess with him all the time because he is different from them. He is smart and special. At that time in South Africa, there is mandatory military, every male from a family has to serve in the army when he turns 18, to avoid that and to pursue his dreams Elon Musk after graduating from Secondary school in Pretoria moved to Canada to his mother’s relatives while he was 17.

Elon Musk’s Study in College
In Canada to survive poverty he worked in some low paid jobs, then he received a scholarship from The University of Pennsylvania and moved to the United States. Elon Musk majored in Physics and Economics, yup two bachelor degrees.

This is How Elon Musk Gets his Start
After he got a seat in Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Stanford University which is very prestigious but he dropped out just after two days to start a new company. He and his brother borrowed $28000 from their father and launched a company called Zip2. To save rent and other expenses he used to sleep in his company office and took showers in a near gym. Four years later they sold their company to Compaq for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock, this is how Elon Musk gets his start he received $22 million for his 7% stake from the sale.

Later he started another company called X.com and it merged with its competitor and turned into PayPal where he got fired as CEO. Later eBay acquired it for $1.5 billion. This is where Elon Musk got rich, he got $165 million from the deal.

From Ordinary Story to Success Story

This is where his story started to become a success story, If some other person got that money he will spend it on mostly Luxuries, well he too bought a McLaren and a Private Jet but he took an extremely risky decision. At that time Electric cars are considered to be slow and ugly but a company called Tesla wants to change it, but while they are in a position of bankrupt Elon Musk invested $80 million on Tesla Motors and became its CEO.

At first, it is a failure, cars are very priced, TV shows like Top Gear brought a lot of negativity to the brand but Elon Musk fights back. He took precision care and took some bold decisions like firing some of the employees and even its co-founder and by actively participating in that company’s innovation and decision making he made the company a car giant. Even our Prime Minister Narendra Modi also visited his factory. Now they are manufacturing Tesla Roadster 2.0 which is the world’s fastest car ever. now if anyone heard the word “electric car” chances are they are thinking of Tesla mostly like it has no opposition. Tesla is now ruling the electric car market unanimously.

Same in the case of SpaceX, at the beginning it was a failure, they tried to launch their first rocket but failed to reach the orbit three times, for every failure it costs millions of dollars. If there had another failure, Elon Musk might lose all his money at that time. But on their fourth attempt the project got succeeded, At that time they got a deal from NASA and from henceforth there is no turning back. They are the first private company to send a spacecraft to International Space Station. Elon Musk taught himself Rocket Science, as he taught himself programming at the age of 12, for him, it’s just a Rocket Science.

He never gives up. Once in an interview, he said “My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”Japanese samurais won’t let their enemies kill them if they can’t win a battle they will kill themselves with their blade. This “never give up attitude” brought him immeasurable success. Not only that but also he is a hard worker, He works 80-100 hours a week. This 46-year-old Business Magnet is the partial inspiration for the movie character “Iron Man” played by Robert Downey Jr. He is a stutterer, he stutters a lot while he is speaking, but the crowd usually laughs and wait for him to speak. If you’re successful, people will ignore your shortcomings.

Elon Musk Net Worth
Now Elon Musk is the Founder of SpaceX, The Boring Company, CEO of Tesla Motors, CEO of Neuralink, Chairman of SolarCity and Co-chairman of OpenAI. From an Immigrant to Advisor of the US President. From failure to Success. Now Elon Musk Net Worth is $20.6 billion.

Conclusion
Have you ever wondered why the best success stories mostly begin with failure??
Some people say that failure is the first step to success, and there is a man who invented the bulb he said this famous quote “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” well it’s a hell of a quote, isn’t it? But do you know what I think about “why most success stories begin with failure?” Because they haven’t stopped at the failure, they keep on pushing their limits irrespective of their circumstances.

Maybe there will be a time in your life where you feel like everything is not working, your work, your relationships, everything but whenever you feel like that all you have to do is one thing, “Just Keep Pushing”.

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