Life lessons from Elon Musk

Elon Musk, with a net worth of over $180 billion, is one of the most renowned and powerful entrepreneurs in the world. He is known for his crazy, bold, ambitious ideas and never-say-die-attitude. He is the CEO of SpaceX, the most innovative private space technology company in the world and Tesla, the world’s best-selling electric car manufacturer.

He is a first-generation entrepreneur and is just 48 years old, proving that nothing is impossible if one works hard, is ambitious and maybe a little insane.

Life lessons from Elon Musk

1. Focus, focus, focus

Elon Musk, like many other super-successful people has a clear message for youngsters- focus on what will make your life, business and career better. Everything else is secondary.

He gives his own example of how he’s eliminated distractions while building electric cars at Tesla: At Tesla, we’ve never spent any money on advertising. We’ve put all our money into engineering, design, and manufacturing to build the best car possible. When we consider spending money, we ask, ‘will this create a better product?’ If not, we don’t proceed with spending the money.

2. Be fearless and take risks

Musk has ventured into two of the riskiest businesses in the world – space exploration and electric cars. These bets have certainly paid off now, but they were big risks when SpaceX and Tesla were launched.

Musk says that most people tend to overstate risks on a personal level. If you’re young, starting out your career, what have you got to lose? You probably won’t starve and that’s good enough.

It’s so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food. Very easy to do.

3. Focus on skills over degrees

According to Musk, young people shouldn’t obsess too much over which college they should go to, but rather focus on acquiring skills. Going to a good college may indicate that a person is capable but it’s not always the case.

Education is important, but employers are more concerned whit what real-life skills a person brings to the organization rather than the degree.

4. Solve problems for others

Many of us are focused on finding a way to make our life better by getting a dream job with that magical pay package. We want to work in an office that has cafes, table tennis and other facilities. But have we ever tried to create value for others, rather than ourselves?

After selling PayPal, if Elon Musk had asked himself how he could make the most money he would probably have started a hedge fund or investment bank. But instead, he chose to ask himself: “How can I make humanity move forward?” And that’s how he started working towards building SpaceX.

And by doing so, he has become one of the richest men in the world.

We may not be able to do everything the way Elon Musk recommends. But more often than not, we are all moving on auto-pilot mode throughout our life. We don’t take risks, don’t think big and then wonder why we couldn’t achieve what we wanted to. Maybe we can take a few lessons from someone who’s done it already and forge our own path to greatness.