Elon Musk Tells Me His Secret Of Success (Hint: It Ain’t About The Money)
In a 2014 interview with Forbes contributor Jim Clash, Elon Musk explains that money has never been his real motivation: what drives him is doing work he is passionate about that is also useful to others.
Transcript
Jim Clash: Elon Musk’s estimated $6.7 billion net worth ranked him 61st on the most recent Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans (September 2013). But when you chat with him, it becomes clear he is not much interested in discussing money. His main driver is what he does. “People should pursue what they’re passionate about,” says the billionaire, just 43. “That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.” Musk is a believer in big change: electric cars (Tesla Motors), solar energy (SolarCity) and reusable spacecraft (SpaceX). “The way rockets work now is they’re expendable,” he says. “You buy them, then throw them away. Imagine if other means of transport were expendable – planes, cars, bicycles, horses. A 747 costs a quarter-billion dollars, and you would need two for a roundtrip. But nobody is paying a half-billion dollars to lunch in New York.” During a recent chat we discussed many things, mostly space-related, but perhaps most interesting is how Musk perceives success – and what it means to him.
JC: Your advice is to embrace what interests you.
EM: You want to do things you’re passionate about but also are useful to other people. To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games – nothing like saving the world [laughs]. Obviously just playing video games is not really contributing to anyone. So you want to do things that contribute to society that you also like. In almost any industry, if you’re passionate about doing a great job and making people that buy your product as happy as possible, it’s really fulfilling.
JC: You seem to have done that with your companies.
EM: There’s a tendency to focus on one person and think somehow that person singlehandedly does these things. But it’s important to emphasize – and I’m not just giving this lip service – that the only reason I was able to accomplish things is the great people willing to work with me. 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. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
JC: Both Tesla and SpaceX are big-idea, contrarian. What takes you down that path and why are you so successful?
EM: Well, I came close to not succeeding myself [in 2008 with SpaceX]. In my case I’m a seer, but I’m a seer because I have to be. What I really see myself doing is the engineering. The companies are a way to amplify great engineering by working with smart people. Important technology problems get solved that way. If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
JC: How do you handle fear?
EM: Company death – not succeeding with the company – causes me a lot more stress than physical danger. But I’ve been in physical danger before. The funny thing is I’ve not actually been that nervous. In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”
JC: You have five kids yourself. What do you envision them doing?
EM: I want them to do things that will make them happy. I mostly hope they do useful things for the world. I also want to make sure they’re not “trust-fund” kids that don’t add anything. I want them to add more than they take.
JC: Will there be much of a difference in your Dragon space capsule once you start carrying humans versus just cargo?
EM: There will be a difference if you want a dramatic improvement in safety and emergency systems. As it is, our cargo Dragon maintains sea level pressure and normal room temperature in the pressurized module. If somebody had stowed on any of our [four cargo] flights, they would have made it to ISS and back fine, no problem. We’re required to transport biological cargo – fish and mice – so it has to be able to support life. And the pressurized cargo area is big – 12 cubic meters – plenty of room. As for people, it’s quite likely by the end of 2016 we will start [flying them].
JC: Do you want to travel in space yourself?
EM: It’s not the reason I’m doing this, but I do want to go at some point.