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In 2001, Elon Musk wanted to spend some of the fortune he amassed from selling Zip2 and X.Com (later PayPal) to start a farming project on Mars. What did he know about sending payloads into space? Not much. Never afraid to lean on others' expertise, Musk cold-called ex-NASA aerospace consultant Jim Cantrell for help. They ended up flying coach to Moscow to shop for refurbished ballistic missiles because the cost of rockets was prohibitive back in the U.S.
Negotiations didn't go well. One of the chief designers at the Russian National Space Agency delivered the coup de grace when he allegedly spat on their shoes.
It says a lot about Musk's mentality that the first thing he did on the plane back was run the numbers and sketch out a plan to build his own rockets. He realized rocket prices were massively inflated above material costs. Today, Musk's SpaceX dominates the commercial launch market, accounting for 525 of the 626 spacecraft sent up during the first quarter of 2024. Take no for an answer? Instead of balking at a seemingly insurmountable problem, Musk takes it as a dare.
I know something about turning the "impossible" into reality. I once started a little bakery in Glendale, California, that morphed into a 500,000-square-foot wholesale operation with 1,300 employees. The dream just kept growing.
Over the course of building multiple businesses, studying visionaries like Musk has been part of my journey. Here are a few of the principles he models as a leader who defies all expectations.
Related: 5 Habits That Made Elon Musk an Innovator
1. Align your purpose with change
Two years ago, Elon Musk gave Jay Leno a tour of the SpaceX factory surrounded by 10.2-foot-tall rocket engines called Raptors standing like Easter Island statues. According to Musk, they were the most advanced engines ever made.
"How quickly can you turn out one of these," Leno asks in a clip of the visit.
"About one a day," Elon replies.
The drive it would have taken to get to that level of output is amazing. And he doesn't even say it with swagger.
But what comes next is even more extraordinary. Asked if he patents the design of the rocket, Musk says "Patents are for the weak" and are usually used as a "blocking technique" to stop creativity. Anybody is free to duplicate Musk's intellectual property provided they do it better and faster. His goal is not to lock down the technology but to transform the industry.
When it comes to his other big interest — renewable energy — Musk is just as confident that Tesla will be the first to create a sustainable system anyway. That takes some audacity, but visionaries take the lead and keep going. The broader point is to have your purposes and goals well defined so you can align the staff and companies you create to be truly transformative and successful.
Related: Elon Musk Defines Ultra-Hard Work While Building a Company
2. Embrace unconventional thinking
Yes, Elon is different. As Cantrell said of his attitude to what would become SpaceX: "He didn't just throw some play money in. He put in his heart, his soul and his mind." I try to take a similar attitude to my diverse interests, particularly regenerative agriculture.
I am driven by the fact that the U.S. spends nearly double the amount of money on healthcare than other developed countries — 17.8% of GDP — yet has the worst health outcomes of any high-income nation.
By investing in this area, I see an opportunity to help make significant changes in the quality of the food we eat, giving us healthier bodies to ward off illnesses. But getting back to farming correctly will require unconventional thinking and a problem-solving mindset.
When the Russians treated Musk as a neophyte, he turned around and said: "I can hire the best rocket engineers, and we can make our own rockets." When everyone assumed rockets had to be expendable, burning up in the atmosphere or crashing into the ocean, he got boosters to survive reentry and landed them upright.
Musk's conviction to run a business on his own terms shows us that when conventional wisdom says "impossible," it is a chance to innovate. So, where others see barriers, look for the missing opportunity.
Related: What Skills Does Elon Musk Have and Why Is He So Successful?
3. Fail fast, learn faster
You have probably heard of failing fast. It's a concept that originated in the software industry that suggests the lessons from failure can actually save a lot of money in the long run, so long as leaders don't double down on the mistake. With a background in this strategy with Zip2 and X.com, Musk adapted the approach to SpaceX, though the stakes at least appeared higher.
After Musk was asked how his night had been following his SN1 prototype bursting apart during a pressure test in 2020, he tweeted: "It's fine, we'll just buff it out." The mission was part of a series of launches designed to test the reusable rocket system intended for Moon and Mars missions. The reality was each Starship flight achieved more than the last:
The first barely got off the ground, the second achieved "hot-staging" 90 miles up, the third made it halfway around Earth before disintegrating. By the fourth flight, they landed the massive booster in the ocean and got the spacecraft to survive reentry. It exemplified the SpaceX mantra of "fail fast, learn faster."
Iteration has never quite looked like this. I have seen CEOs burned by previous experience close themselves off to innovative ideas. But with Musk, he always figures out a solution.
At times during my business career, I was pushed to the point of losing everything — but I used those experiences to fix our issues and keep the company on track to success. Those issues caused us to become stronger and eventually do more than we thought possible. So, my final advice is to become motivated by the challenge, and if you are doing it right, there will always be a new one on the horizon.
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