Elon Musk's success with Tesla Motors, SpaceX, and SolarCity has been well documented. But what are the secrets to his success? And how can you apply them to your own life and career? Here are seven rules of success from the world's most outstanding entrepreneur!
RULE #1: Work Like Hell
When I was a kid, I was told that if I worked hard enough, I would be able to get out of South Africa one day. It's just a matter of hard work --no talent required. When I moved to North America and started working straight away at age 17 in various jobs, it seemed my hard work paid off in exactly what everyone said it would: great opportunities. But after graduating from university some years later, things weren't so great anymore. Although still working a lot more than most people do, even at my low-level job in Canada (or any other job), my life wasn't improving very much. So why did people say that hard work is all you need?
RULE #2: Be Persistent and Patient
Elon Musk believes in working hard, maintaining a long-term outlook, and staying persistent. Persistence is significant. It would be best if you did not give up unless you are forced to give up. If something has been put on hold, you shouldn't just give up because it takes too long to make progress—you should do your best to stick with it and remain patient. After all, as we previously mentioned, things rarely happen overnight! Patience and persistence are two virtues that will take you far in life, especially if you're trying to start a new business or become an entrepreneur.
RULE #3: Always Have a Clear Objective
Before you start your journey, it's essential to understand where you're headed. First and foremost, your goals should be specific. They should include a destination (an amount), a deadline (measured in days or weeks), and measurable results that you must achieve to mark progress towards that goal. It may sound simple, but many people have problems with clarity here because they don't know exactly what it is they want to achieve when they set out on their journey. Take time to figure out where you want to end up before starting on your path.
RULE #4: Think Big, but Start Small
You can't conquer a mountain without taking baby steps. The same goes for your business. Big thinking is excellent, but think small to achieve it. Set realistic goals that you can achieve in stages. Then, keep pushing forward and achieving those goals until you get where you want to be. It's essential to have vision and passion, but those things won't do you any good if your plan doesn't include steps to make them happen!
RULE #5: Do Not Go Off Track, Stay Focused
I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A STRAIGHTFORWARD PROCESS when I started with my first company, Zip2. And what happened was we got successful quickly. We got more work than we could handle by hiring more people and then having those people eat their small sub-startup within our company. Then when it came time to finish our product and deliver it, there were all these political infighting battles going on within the team and multiple groups trying to do different things that led to many delays in getting a product out. Ultimately we ended up releasing an unfinished product late and then had to go through firefighting for about a year before we could finally settle down enough to where I felt like, okay, now we can get back on track.— Elon Musk
RULE #6: Learn Quickly from Failures
I've been sure that we were about to die on a few occasions. I've wondered whether it was worth continuing SpaceX at all a few times. I try not to let people know when I think like that, but there have been many dark moments internally. However, if something is important enough, you will find a way — even if there is no way — because you must. The real trick is figuring out how important something is while still having sufficient distance to make good decisions... It always seems impossible until it is done.-- Elon Musk
Rule #7: Have Fun!!
One of my most extensive insights came when I was in Paris visiting a friend. I happened to be standing at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, which meant that I was more or less directly below one of those120ft television antennas. Just as I marveled at how impossibly thin and light they'd made these gigantic tungsten rods, it struck me: all significant problems are complex because they're hard to solve. If you have a simple problem, it can usually be solved by simple rules like adding more servers. Conversely, if you have a tricky issue—like how to get humans to Mars—you should see that as an opportunity: if there were easy solutions for challenging problems, we would have found them already.
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