Elon Musk: 5 Actions That Led Him To Success
When we talk about entrepreneurs, innovators, and successful people, Elon Musk’s name stands out, as he is known as “the real-life Iron Man” in social networks. He has revolutionized the world of transportation both on earth and in space. Tesla Motors, his car factory, has designed and manufactured all-electric vehicles for the market, while SpaceX, his rocket company is valued at over $20 billion.
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk was born in South Africa, as a child, he was interested in video games, programming, and science fiction. At the age of 17, he moved to Canada, and due to exchange, he ended up studying at the University of Pennsylvania, thus becoming a technological magnate who has revolutionized the industry.
This South African physicist has focused on revolutionizing areas that he believes are decisive for the future of humanity. Such as the Internet, transactions towards renewable energy sources, and space colonization.
From a very young age, Elon Musk stood out as an entrepreneur, founding together with his brother Zip2, a company they sold for more than 300 million dollars. He later founded X.com, which would become PayPal, which was bought by eBay for 1.5 million dollars.
He devotes much of his time to the development of large-scale projects. That is why he decided to found SpaceX, a company with which he has achieved feats related to space engineering. He has also succeeded in founding:
- SolarCity: a company that works on renewable energies.
- Hyperloop: mass transit system.
- Neuralink: a company dedicated to neurotechnology.
- OpenAI: Researches and develops artificial intelligence safe for humans.
Elon Musk’s net worth exceeds $185 billion according to Bloomberg, after the shares of his car company had a rise, reaching a market value of $700 billion. Musk thinks he will spend most of his money on building a base on Mars, as he considers that ending his life with millions in the bank would be a sign of failure for not having put the money to good use.
Elon Musk as an example of success and leadership
To be the CEO of a company that has the ability to place a car for the first time in space as a marketing strategy, you must be a risk-taker, with a lot of imagination and a great passion for what you do and what you believe in. He must also have some qualities such as persistence and persuasive power.
Elon Musk is an exceptional entrepreneur with a different way of understanding business management, marketing, and leadership. He possesses all those characteristics and qualities that make him different and demarcate the keys to his success. The achievements of Elon Musk, a CEO with the competencies and attitudes of a leader, plus his atypical skills, make him an exceptional entrepreneurial genius and one of the great CEOs of the 21st century.
Common characteristics between Elon Musk and other great leaders and entrepreneurs
Optimism: a totally positive mental attitude, where there is no room for discouragement or negativity. In them, determination, confidence, and courage prevail over fear and uncertainty, and most importantly, they have the ability to transmit this optimism to their team, making them more capable and committed professionals.
Perseverance: these leaders never give up, they take care to study and analyze all possible ways to achieve their goals.
Defined objectives: they have the ability to clearly define their objectives, detail them and evaluate them at the same time, they are highly significant for their personal life.
Quality and excellence: anyone who has worked with Elon Musk knows that he is a very demanding person, both with himself and with his team. He is always looking for continuous improvement, which is why many people cannot keep up with him.
Not afraid to think big: the most striking thing about Elon Musk’s businesses is how bold they are, he wants to revolutionize the automotive industry, colonize Mars, build super-fast trains in vacuum tunnels, integrate artificial intelligence with human brains, change the solar energy and battery industry. All these businesses have in common that they are futuristic and on an astonishing scale.
Elon Musk’s tips for success
These are some of Elon Musk’s keys to success. In addition to the qualities we have just mentioned, this entrepreneur recommends some tips for organizations to be successful:
1. Clear communication
Many professionals use jargon and terminology that is not easy to understand for those who are not involved in the project. Elon Musk places great emphasis on his different work teams communicating with each other using simple, everyday language that is understandable to the different teams.
2. Combine different skills
This entrepreneur is a master of combining skills and disciplines such as engineering and marketing among others. So if you are in a project try to join working groups and if you are creating your own company, recruit the best candidates for each position and design a perfect team dynamic with a brilliant team.
The success of the company depends on the intelligence and the work of the team, the more they are together and combine their skills in the same direction, the better the results will be. Selecting the right people to work with you is a golden rule for Elon Musk and many great entrepreneurs.
3. Learn from your mistakes
Elon Musk states that the success of a company will depend on how fast they are able to correct their mistakes since when seeking to achieve success, uncertain roads are traveled where being able to overcome or not the obstacles is what conditions the permanence in the market.
Having a bad strategy or making a bad decision cannot be interpreted as a definitive defeat. You should always analyze the situation from a constructive approach and take advantage of the learning opportunity it offers you. It is important to know how to analyze mistakes, what went wrong, and why? Remember that many of the great success stories are preceded by multiple failures.
4. Set deadlines and prepare for crises.
When you have a project established, you must set deadlines for the achievement of the objectives.
They must prepare their work teams to meet the established timelines and prepare them to overcome any crisis that may arise. Since founding Tesla in 2003, Elon Musk has been on the verge of losing his money on more than one occasion, but he has always been able to overcome crises and move forward.
5. Ignore the critics
Many people made comments regarding the future of Tesla, in fact, some said that the death of this company would come soon because it was too ambitious a project.
Musk regarding these comments said, “I think it would be arrogant if we said we’re definitely going to do it, rather than we aspire to do it, and we’re going to do our best.” This brings us to his entrepreneurial lesson, don’t listen to the critics, for him, success is a function of the important problems he has been able to solve and not by the amount of money he has made.
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur who takes risks without caring what others think or say, this makes his decision-making easier because he can focus on what is really important to him.
Despite Elon Musk’s great achievements and the impact they have had on society, his keys to success are very simple guidelines to follow that can be adapted to any type of business. Surely these tips will help to change many perspectives to move forward steadily on the proposed path.