Dear Entrepreneur, Here Are 15 Powerful Quotes By Elon Musk

Elon Musk is one of the greatest innovators and entrepreneurs in the world. Born in 1971 to a Canadian mother and a South African father, he spent his childhood in Pretoria, South Africa before moving to Canada.

More than a magnate, an innovator, and some say out of his world person, Elon Musk has a lot to teach, and this is the reason, he has an outstanding entrepreneurial life.

Elon Musk has been in the news recently involving the Tesla Model 3 unveiling, in which a ridiculous number of pre-sales were made, resulting in billions in revenue within a very short span of time.

From getting behind the wheel of an electric car revolution to charting the next steps in space exploration, Elon Musk has made a name for himself as a visionary entrepreneur.

1. When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Elon Musk’s primary goal is literally to save the planet through the implementation of greener technology.  He created revolutionary green companies one after the other. Firstly, by creating solar factories that can mass-produce solar panels and batteries

2. You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong

This is what we call a growth mindset, the ability to fail, learn something new, and then approach the problem from a different angle until you find a solution that works. But the more unfamiliar road to growing and learning isn’t suitable for everyone

3. You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve

A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating.

4. It is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary

People who set themselves to changing the world and making the most of their talents are not different than you, they just cancel ordinary thoughts. Extraordinary living starts with a simple shift in mindset. But people who behave in extraordinary ways separate themselves by the wholesale rejection of negative thinking

5. Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold

Nobody really likes to be criticized. You may even be one of those people who are so afraid of criticism that they spend their time doing only what others expect of them. Extraordinary people, such as Elon Musk, are constantly seeking criticism. It is their way of constantly pushing the limits of the society in which they live.

6. A failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough

Building new technology is about trial and error. If you’re right all the time, then you’re following another person’s recipe.

7. One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy.

Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really; we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.

8. Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up

When does a startup die? According to Paul Graham, a startup dies when the founder gives up. In fact, a primary reason Paul Graham invested in Airbnb was that the founders refused to give up.

Likewise, Elon Musk has taken part in great risks to keep SpaceX afloat, even going so far as to invest $100 million of his personal money into SpaceX.

9. Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors

Most leaders focus on only one of the two elements of a vector: magnitude and tend to ignore the direction. If you have some people on your team running hard in the wrong direction when you sum the vectors of everyone on the team those running hard in the wrong direction cancel out those going in the right direction.

10. If you buy a ticket to hell, it isn’t fair to blame hell

What Musk describes in this quote is the life of an entrepreneur. And also, to some extent. Unrelenting stress is the hardest of the three. Stress is part of life; we all have it. Starting and running companies bring stress that seemingly never stop

11. Life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future

What we do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is that Elon Musk is a man obsessed with the highest possible peaks of human achievement, and he is also a man who talks a lot about dying.

12. Education is basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain

And learning, for Musk, is simply the process of “downloading data and algorithms into your brain.”3 Among his many frustrations with formal classroom learning is the “ridiculously slow download speed” of sitting in a classroom while a teacher explains something, and to this day, most of what he knows he’s learned through reading

13. It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket

When investing your assets, a common phrase is that you have to diversify your assets. In a volatile environment such as the stock market. Diversity is key.

14. Don’t confuse schooling with education. I didn’t go to Harvard but the people that work for me did

School should promote individual, critical thinking and true ownership, passion, and leadership. A good education shows also good behavior and treats people nicely and appreciative. Learn from successful people how and why they made it.

15. Work on your Mental Models

But with great power comes great responsibility. Mental models are complex and rooted in human nature. They affect how we see problems, and how we see people. Depending on how you use them, mental models can be incredibly constructive, or destructive.