Last month, Elon Musk became the second richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine. Experts are now predicting that he could overtake Jeff Bezos and take the top spot this year. So, what’s the secret to your success? A few years ago, I spent almost an hour discussing exactly that with him. To mark your new milestone, we decided to dust off the interview and share it with you. So here is Elon Musk’s guide to business success.
1. It’s not about money
This is absolutely central to Musk’s attitude towards business.
When I interviewed him in 2014, he said he didn’t know how rich he was.
“It’s not like there’s a pile of money somewhere,” he said. “In fact, I have a number of votes for Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity, and the market has value in those votes.”
He has nothing against the search for wealth “if it is done ethically and correctly”, but he said that is not what drives him.
The approach certainly seems to be working.
The real life inspiration for Tony Stark’s portrait of Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man was worth maybe $ 10 billion ($ 7.3 billion) when we talked in 2014. Now it’s more than $ 150 billion.
His electric car company, Tesla, performed particularly well. The shares increased 700% in 2020, bringing their value to more than $ 600 billion. For that, you could buy Ford, General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler, and there would still be enough left to buy Ferrari.
But Musk, who turns 50 this year, does not expect to die rich. He said he thinks most of his money will be spent on building a base on Mars and would not be surprised if the project consumes his entire fortune.
In fact, like Bill Gates, he would probably consider ending his life with billions in the bank as a mark of failure because he did not make good use of that money.
2. Pursue your passions
This Mars base is a clue to what Musk believes is the key to success.
“You want things in the future to be better,” he told me. “You want these new and exciting things that make life better.”
Take the SpaceX. He told me he started the company because he was frustrated because the US space program was no longer ambitious.
“I expected that we would move beyond Earth, put a person on Mars and have a base on the Moon and have, you know, very frequent orbit flights,” he said.
When that didn’t happen, he came up with the “Mars Oasis Mission”, which aimed to send a small greenhouse to the red planet. The idea was to get people excited about space again and persuade the United States government to increase NASA’s budget.
As he tried to get it off the ground, he realized that the problem was not “unwillingness, but lack of path” – space technology was much more expensive than it needed to be.
Et voila! The cheapest rocket launch business in the world was born.
And the important thing is that its genesis was not to make money, but to land a person on Mars.
Musk told me that he considers himself more of an engineer than an investor, and that what makes him wake up in the morning is the will to solve technical problems.
It is this, rather than dollars in the bank, that measures your progress. He knows that every obstacle his business overcomes helps everyone else trying to solve the same problem – and he will solve it forever.
That is why, just before we met, the businessman announced that he would open all Tesla patents to accelerate the development of electric vehicles worldwide.
3. Don’t be afraid to think big
One of the really impressive things about Musk’s business is how bold they are.
He wants to revolutionize the auto industry, colonize Mars, build super-fast trains in vacuum tunnels, integrate AI with human brains and bring down the solar and battery industries.
There is a common thread here. All of your projects are the kind of futuristic fantasies you would find in a children’s magazine in the early 1980s.
Putting it this way, his tunnel construction business is called The Boring Company.
Musk does not hide the fact that he was inspired by the books and films he consumed as a child in South Africa.
Which brings us to Musk’s third business tip – don’t hold back.
He believes that low ambition is embedded in the incentive structures of most companies.
Many companies are “incrementalists”, he said. “If you are the CEO of a large company and want something that is a modest improvement, and takes longer than expected and does not work so well, then no one is going to blame you,” he told me. You can say it was not my fault, it was the suppliers.
If you are bold and seek a truly revolutionary improvement, and it does not work, you will definitely be fired, argues Musk. He says that is why most companies focus on making small improvements to their existing products, instead of daring to imagine completely new ones.
Therefore, his advice is to make sure that you are working on what he calls “things that will matter”.
Two things stand out in Musk’s personal hierarchy of important things.
First, he wants to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels.
Here’s what the entrepreneur had to say about it: “We are making use of deep gas fields and deep oil fields that haven’t seen daylight since the Cambrian era. If the last time something saw light was when the organism more complex was a sponge, you really have to question whether this is a smart move. “
Second, he wants to ensure the long-term survival of humanity by colonizing Mars and “making life multiplanetary”.
As I said, think big.
4. Be ready to take risks
This is obvious.
You need to have skin to do well, but Musk took more risks than most.
In 2002, he sold his stakes in his first two ventures, an Internet city guide called Zip2 and the online payment company PayPal. He had just entered his 30s and had almost $ 200 million in the bank.
He says his plan was to put half of his fortune in business and keep the other half.
It didn’t work out that way. When I met him, he was coming out of the darkest period of his business life.
Their new companies faced all sorts of initial problems. The first three launches of Space X failed and Tesla had all sorts of production, supply chain and design problems.
Then came the financial crisis.
Musk said he faced a difficult choice. “I could take the money, so companies will definitely die, or invest what I have left and maybe there is a chance.”
He continued to pour money.
At one point, he was so indebted that he had to borrow money from friends just to pay his expenses, he told me.
So, did the prospect of bankruptcy frighten you?
He says no: “My kids may have to go to some kind of public school, I mean, big deal. I went to a public school.”
5. Ignore criticism
What really shocked him – and it became clear in 2014 that he was still very upset about it – was the pleasure that many analysts and commentators took in his pain.
“The liberal schadenfreude was really surprising,” said Musk. “There were several blog sites keeping a watch on Tesla’s death.”
I suggest that people wanted him to fail because there is a kind of arrogance in his ambition.
He rejects that. “I think it would be arrogant if we said we would definitely do that, as opposed to what we aspire to do, and we will do our best.”
This brings us to Musk’s next lesson on business success – don’t listen to critics.
He told me that he didn’t believe SpaceX or Tesla would ever make money when he created them – and the truth is that no one else did.
But he ignored the destroyers and went ahead anyway.
Because? Remember, this is a man who judges success based on the important problems he solved, not how much money he has earned.
Think about how liberating it is. He is not worried about looking stupid because his big financial bet was not worth it, what worries him is to follow important ideas.
This makes decision making much simpler because it can focus on what it believes to be really important.
And the market seems to like what he’s doing.
In October, American investment bank Morgan Stanley valued SpaceX at $ 100 billion.
The company has transformed the economy of space flight, but what will make Musk more proud will be how his company reinvigorated the United States’ space program.
This summer, one of his Crew Dragon rockets launched six astronauts to the International Space Station, the first such mission on American soil since the space shuttles were retired in 2011.
6. Have fun
Follow this guide and, with a little luck, you too will become incredibly rich and famous. Then you can start to come out of your shell.
Mr. Musk is notoriously a workaholic – he prides himself on working 120 hours a week to keep Tesla Model 3 production on track – but since we met, he seems to be enjoying himself.
It sparked controversy with defamation lawsuits, drug smoking in the air and violent explosions on social media.
In 2018, he had problems with the American financial regulator when he tweeted that he planned to make Tesla private, and when the Covid-19 pandemic forced Tesla to stop production at its San Francisco Bay area plant, he became a vocal opponent of coronavirus blocking restrictions.
He called the panic about the virus “donkey” on Twitter and described the orders to stay at home as “forced imprisonment”, saying they were “fascists” and a violation of constitutional rights.
In the summer, he announced plans to sell his physical assets saying that they “weigh on you”.
Days later, he logged on to Twitter to tell the world that his newborn son would be called X Æ A-12 Musk.
However, his unpredictable behavior does not seem to have affected his business, and the entrepreneur remains ambitious as always.
In September, Musk said Tesla would have a $ 25,000 “attractive” car in three years and said that soon all of the company’s new cars would be fully autonomous.
And its year ended with a real crash in December, when SpaceX tested its Starship launch vehicle that hopes to take the first humans to Mars.
The giant rocket exploded when it crashed six minutes after takeoff.
Musk considered the test an “incredible” success.
You can follow Justin on Twitter: @BBCJustinR