Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping Our Future
Today, many people would consider Elon Musk to be one of the greatest entrepreneurial minds in the world.
The reason is that, before the age of 40, Musk became extremely successful in relation to four ultra-competitive industries:
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Internet (Paypal),
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Car manufacturing (Tesla Motors),
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Space rocket manufacturing (SpaceX), and
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Renewable energy (SolarCity).
After completing a 1000 page textbook on Contract Law, I decided to read Elon’s biography as my mind was just yearning to absorb new information about any recent technological advances.
Written by technology journalist Ashlee Vance, we are told that Musk, initially, refused to cooperate as he did not want a book about him to be produced.
However, after Vance conducted more than two hundred interviews, Musk decided to contact him directly then, eventually, offered to assist without any conditions.
The result is that ‘Elon Musk’ appears to provide us with an unprecedented insight into Musk’s life – from his troubled background in South Africa to his rapid rise to global business success in the USA.
A Big Big Big Thinker!
What I found most impressive about Musk, is that he appears to epitomises the importance, as well as the power, of big thinking.
We are told, for example, that visitors to SpaceX in California will find two giant posters of Mars hanging on a wall leading up to Musk’s workstation.
One picture shows Mars as it is now; a cold and bone-dry red globe, whilst the other depicts Mars with large green areas of land surrounded by oceans.
Unlike your typical day-dreamer, the writer informs us that Musk created his rocket company in order to someday turn this vision into reality; moreover, with
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Paypal, Musk was trying to build an internet bank that would compete against many of the major international financial institutions in the world.
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Tesla, Elon produces electric cars that push the limits of technology, like the Model S, which tech multi-millionaires crave to purchase. In fact, a renown non-profit consumer magazine in the US, Consumer Reports, gave Tesla its highest car rating in history: 99 out of 100. They further claimed that it was probably the best car ever built, eclipsing the ratings of prestigious car makers such as BMW and Mercedes
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SolarCity, as it largest shareholder, Musk’s company is on a path to fulfilling its goal of becoming one of the United States largest suppliers of electricity. They are achieving this by installing and selling solar panels, and energy storage systems.
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SpaceX, as a low cost producer of rockets, Musk is battling the giants of the U.S military industrial complex, and nations such as Russia and China, to transport astronauts and cargo to space.
We are further informed that Musk initially lacked expert knowledge of all the above industries, but remarkably he did not allow this fact to bother him in the slightest.
Like Elon, many highly successful billionaires demonstrate extra-ordinary levels of focus, determination, and work ethic – but it is the suggested size of Musk’s thoughts throughout this book that, in my view, really seems to separate him from the rest.
Is Musk a Horrible Person?
In spite of Elon’s many strengths, the writer also portrays him, at times, to be an extremely insensitive and egotistical person, who has ill-treated many of his former employees.
At SpaceX, for instance, we are told that employees
‘…flew into a collective rage every time they caught Musk in the press claiming to have designed the Falcon rocket more or less by himself…and many good engineers…were forced out or simply fired for things they hadn’t done (p. 134).’
However, this biography gave me the sense that Musk’s lack of sensitivity appears to have been an essential part of his success, and a natural by-product of his
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Belief that life is short
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Willingness to give up everything
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Willingness to lose his entire fortune
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Commitment to living an imbalanced life that may cause him to verge on a nervous breakdown in order to achieve his goals
For example, we are told that the day to day running of his businesses
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Involved a punishing regime of weekly air travel,
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Were endlessly troublesome, and
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Required him to lose millions of dollars for years without any guarantee of success.
I drew the conclusion that not many, if any, individuals could walk in Elon’s shoes unless he or she was, at the least, also being driven by Musk’s deep-seated sense of purpose.
What I Did Not Like About The Book!
On the third page of the text, we are told that Musk was concerned about Google’s cofounder and CEO, Larry Page, naively working on artificial intelligence-enhanced robots that are capable of destroying mankind – and that it took a while for Musk to get off the doom-and-gloom talk about it.
However, disappointingly, within this biography there is no further mention of this alarming subject or further details about the nature of Musk’s concerns.
It May Change Your Life!
Among many other things, this book challenged me to re-measure how much I am
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Pursuing my dreams and thinking big, as taught within ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’ by David J. Schwartz.
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Being creative as opposed to competitive, as explored in detail within ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles.
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Creating a business with my ultimate purpose in life as the foundation, as detailed within the book ‘Start With Why’ Simon Sinek.
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Utilising and pursuing self-education, as demonstrated excellent within the ‘Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,’ to achieve my business goals.
Indirectly, this book also force me to assess the level of my spiritual consciousness. This is because the following quote kept creeping into my mind as I read more about Musk’s obsessive temperament and insensitive behaviour:
“… he who is daily living in harshness, impurity, or unhappiness is day by day adding to the sum of the world’s misery…he who has not learned how to be gentle, or giving, loving and happy, has learned very little, great though his book-learning…may be.”
James Allen (Above Life’s Turmoil)
To conclude, I encourage those interested in business and personal development only to read this book in order to learn from Elon’s life and experiences urgently.
And, in light of the above, I give this text a 6 out of 10 (6/10).