3 Surprising Moves Elon Musk Made in His Career That Worked — And Why You Should Start Making Them Today
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Travis Woods
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Elon Musk is the third richest man on the planet, with a net worth standing at a whopping $179 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index (though that net worth dropped by $50.4 billion year-to-date).
Musk is –deep breath — the founder, chairman, CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla, Inc., owner, chairman and CTO of X Corp., founder of the Boring Company and xAI, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, and president of the Musk Foundation. Last but not least, Musk bought X — formerly Twitter – for an eye-popping $44 billion in 2022.
Musk, who is known for not being afraid of speaking his mind and has sparked several controversies, has made several moves in his career that worked well, and which could also resonate with a larger audience:
1. Getting in Early on Trends
Musk tends to get in early on trends, especially when it comes to technology shifts.
“He basically took a start-up type of attitude (innovative, high chance of failure) to cars and rockets, which had both become stagnant industries dominated by aversion to risk andc hange, and run by bean counters instead of engineers,” according to a Quora user.
This was once again demonstrated most recently with his foray into artificial intelligence (AI), with the newest company, xAI, which is working on “building artificial intelligence to accelerate human scientific discovery,” according to its website.
2. Focusing on Costs
The Wall Street Journal reported that Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk (“Elon Musk”), shows the extreme attention Musk has had on costs — especially at SpaceX.
“Musk once ordered engineers to develop an in-house valve after a supplier quoted a price he deemed too high. Another time, he ordered the company to make an actuator for $5,000 after SpaceX was quoted an outside price of $120,000,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
3. Diversifying
Musk, unlike many of his fellow billionaires, took a very different approach to amass his extraordinary wealth thanks to several and diversified business operations instead of a single success path, according to History Computer.
From electric vehicles, to rockets and from social media to AI, Musk seemingly has a hand in several sectors, which might be helping him protect against risk — and potential losses.
In turn, he has also been able to re-invest some of his profits. Most recently for instance, he had pledged 58% of his Tesla shares as collateral to secure personal indebtedness for the 2022 $44 billion Twitter acquisition, according to Bloomberg.
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