Elon Musk: How The Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping Our Future

BookMattic’s Book Of Choice:

Author:

Ashlee Vance

Published:

May 21st, 2015

BookMattic’s Rating:

4/5

‘Elon Musk’ is a book that I started to read a few months ago mainly because I was curious about this extraordinary man’s life but also because I wanted to know more about how he became so successful. What made him so motivated to create very lucrative businesses in the automotive, aeronautics and clean energy industries that no other business person would have put their hands on or their money for that matter?

The Biggest Lesson:

Go for something no one else has ever gone for before or has failed in succeeding to do so.

One of the reasons why Musk is so determined to accomplish the things everyone else thinks are impossible according to Ashlee Vance’s book is that Musk has an overall desire to protect the future of the human race from destroying itself. To reach his life goal he created Tesla and SpaceX which both strive to use sustainable materials and energy at the lowest cost possible for its customers. Musk’s tireless attitude toward attaining his goals no matter what other people think of him is the biggest takeaway from this book. His story can inspire all of us to go for something no one else has ever done before and achieve the unbelievable.

Takeaways:

1. Reading

You might think that you personally can’t achieve the things like Musk has achieved, but that’s not true. There’s a tool that you can use to get what you want in the future and that’s reading. The first 50 pages of ‘Elon Musk’ were dedicated to Elon’s life from 1984 to 1994, where Vance explains that Musk, as a boy in elementary school, would rather spend hours and hours of his leisure time reading books than playing outside with his cousins or friends. He would read about anything that he was passionate about at the time which surprisingly the genres were very closely related to the companies that he has founded so far. The book also mentions that when he started SpaceX he knew close to nothing about the physical workings of a rocket. So what did he do? He studied like crazy by reading and not just watching over the engineers but getting hands on and learning by doing.

2. No Excuses

As I’ve also read in this book Musk doesn’t take any excuses from anyone unless you have a good reason. If he wants something done a certain way, you must do it that way. In Musk’s book, there are no ‘buts’. Of course, he’ll still listen to you if you have a valid reason with exact explanations as to why you have been delayed on a project or why it wasn’t done the way he wanted it. This is something we all could learn from although it may not be as drastic as how Musk does it. The point is that in order to reach your business goals you may have to upset a few people along the way. Afterall, you are the final decision-maker in whatever company you’re running.

3. Make Time To Relax

Finally, on a lighter note, I found out that Musk likes to play video games. I think it’s a way for him let loose a little after he worked hard to accomplish what he wanted to. Once in a while Musk would even have a gaming party right in the middle of the assembly floor at the SpaceX headquarters. All his employees would gather (at least the ones that liked games) and play until the break of dawn. The lesson that we can take from this is that even successful people that have accomplished great feats need time to relax their mind and body especially for someone like Musk who sometimes would find himself working 20 hours at a time just to meet a deadline. That type of work would bring anyone, no matter how smart, down.

Best Quote

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”

Bottom-line

Elon Musk is seriously my hero. I’m not a scientist or an engineer but I can relate to business and startups. He is one of the most inventive and influential entrepreneurs in this generation or even in the last century and he’s not afraid to take chances other people were unwilling to take. He’ll put his fortune on the line just to earn what he’s worked for all his life. If you could take even just a tad of Elon’s energy and apply it to your own life and work ethics you could achieve anything.

These are just a few of the main aspects of ‘Elon Musk’ that I found interesting and inspiring and thought would be good to share with you, but there is tons more you can learn from this book, and if you want to take a little peek into Musk’s personal life, it’s got that in there too. All in all, I recommend this book for entrepreneurs or anyone who is interested in Elon Musk or his businesses.

-BookMattic

Matt Hutson is a passionate self-help and business book worm and blogger on the “BookMattic” blog where he shares book reviews and lessons learned from some of the best books out there. He desires to spread the love of reading to as many people as he can.