14 Lessons From Elon Musk Every Entrepreneur Should Learn
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Elon Musk is a visionary, a revolutionary person who dedicates his life to astonish us with his out-of-the-earth ideas and work-life schedules.
If there is one man on earth you cannot become, it probably might be Elon Musk.
But That doesn’t mean we cannot try to be like him, even if we get 20% of his supernatural powers, we might accomplish massive success in a few months.
Months?
Yes, that’s because Elon Musk works just about 80 – 100 hours a week, sometimes more which translates to 11-14 hours every day or 13-17 hours if he gives himself a Sunday off. That’s almost 2.5 times what an average person works in a week.
14 Lessons From Elon Musk Every Entrepreneur Must Learn
1. Embrace Constructive Criticism
Many shy away from criticism, but Musk embraces it. He says that criticism is the only way you can improve your product. Hearing what bad your product does will ensure you work on it and solve all the problems ASAP.
When he spoke with the automobile engineers during Tesla’s development, he asked them, “What is wrong with the design?” instead of saying what’s good in it.
Think of your product as if you’re an outsider and you’re reviewing the product. It will help your company grow and close the loose ends with your product.
So don’t shy away from criticism and ask for what’s bad instead of what’s good.
2. Innovate Instead of Imitate
When Elon Musk tries to start a business, he doesn’t replicate an already existing business and tries to improve it. He starts with an entirely different idea and business strategy and innovates as if it was never made.
This helps him to know everything there is in the niche and ensure he does not follow the same thing done by other industries.
When Tesla was launched, it was a revolutionary idea right away, Elon Musk wasn’t the first to build electric cars, but his electric cars were something else that no one had ever done.
3. Master the Basics and Redefine the Norm
When Elon Musk started working with batteries, he realized that batteries cost as much as $600 per kilowatt-hour but the bare raw materials cost about $80 per Kilowatt hour.
So he focused on creating a whole new brand of Tesla batteries. He started working from ground level assuming that batteries never existed and used his principles and knowledge to make batteries so energy efficient that will massively reduced the price of the electric car.
His mindset was simple – Can there be a better way to design the Batteries to achieve lower costs, and higher output at mass scale? Break things down to the core, then start analyzing from the very basics to find a better solution.
This will help you to get breakthroughs that other entrepreneurs might not achieve as they are happy with what’s already available.
If you get a problem you can’t get off, you need to take a step back, break down your product into the first stage basics of your products, and work from there assuming your products are never born.
In time you will create a breakthrough as amazing as the Tesla Batteries did.
4. Question Everything, Including Yourself
Elon Musk questions everything he does, everything. If there isn’t a reason and logical explanation to it, he won’t do that task.
By constantly questioning yourself, you get to know where you’re going wrong and how you can improve yourself. Asking questions like how should I be more productive or how can I grow my business can benefit you more than you think.
Questions help you to learn, develop, grow, and push yourself to achieve massive results. So don’t forget to constantly question yourself if you want to grow yourself.
5. Work Harder, Longer, and Smarter
Elon Musk works for about 100 hours a week. Yes, it’s not a typing error. He works 2.5 times as much as what an average American works.
He says “It’s a super huge amount of work. I think sometimes people sort of have this idea that if they were the CEO of a company they would just give themselves a whole lot of vacations and procrastinate on work. “
Elon Musk makes it very clear that starting your own business means putting in more hours than working for someone else. If you want to achieve big, then you better prepare yourself to work crazy long hours.
6. Prioritize Customer Needs and Transparency
What does your customer actually need? Most often we assume what the customer needs rather than figuring out the things that could make their life much more comfortable.
At the end of the day, a customer purchases your product only because it adds a certain amount of value, comfort, and convenience to their lives.
Musk believes in complete transparency to his customers. He loves to share everything there is about his company Tesla.
If you want to know how he makes his cars step by step, he is more than happy to tell you everything in detail.
There are numerous videos on everything you may need on Tesla cars. Being so open to his customers makes them trust him and get motivated to buy his products.
7. Quality Over Quantity in Talent Acquisition
Musk says that instead of hiring a bunch of people, focus on the best, and hire the few. Quality is greater than quantity.
Musk finds people with exceptional problem-solving capabilities and so should you. Don’t just find people to work with, find the best people to work with.
You need to make sure the hired understands what the company stands for. You can do this by talking about the company’s visions and goals.
So next time you want to hire, take the time to find the right talent, it may just be one employee but if that one is better than 3 other employees, it will certainly help your company grow faster.
8. Think Big and Dream Bigger
If there is one guy who thinks BIG – It’s Elon Musk. He starts working on things we dream about and doesn’t stop till he achieves success.
He created an electric car company called Tesla which is the king of electric cars today, SpaceX which plans on sending people to outer space at an affordable cost and colonize Mars, The Boring Company was created to reduce traffic by constructing underground tunnels and stations that will take us from point A to point B much faster than Road transportation, SolarCity to reshape energy landscape by making solar power accessible and affordable to everyone are some of the revolutionary companies he started.
To be successful in your field, you need to start thinking big, taking huge actions, and doing whatever it takes to reach the top of the ladder. If you think small or average, you will likely end up being average.
To stand out of the herd, you’ve got to “THINK BIG”.
9. Never Compromise on Quality and User Experience
Elon Musk knows that creating an amazing Electric car is essential but if its complexities don’t let anyone enjoy the experience, it’s a big failure.
What’s the use if you create something awesome but even the few customers using it are finding it difficult to comprehend? You need to constantly find ways to improve what you have already created.
Keep in mind that no Product Is Ever Perfect. The applicability of your product should be so easy that even a 5-year-old should understand how to use the product.
10. Embrace Failure as a Stepping Stone
The main reason we don’t try something new is that we fear we will fail. Failure is surely scary but it’s just the mind playing silly games with you.
Everyone fails at every stage of life, but if you don’t start because of it, you’ll live an average life. Taking risks leads to failures but if you learn from them, you come out stronger than before.
Failure is a part of success because success demands you to fail again and again. That doesn’t mean you don’t try, it means you Try and Fail and Learn and Repeat again and again.
11. Share and Collaborate for Fresh Insights
You might think Elon Musk keeps all of his brilliant ideas close to him. Well, think again. He shares his ideas with his team and even the public.
What does this teach us? It teaches us that we should use our existing communication infrastructure to allow a large group of people to share ideas and be a part of our journey.
People feel better as they are connected to the process of development and Entrepreneur benefits as he gets fresh ideas from a large group of people.
This is an amazing strategy as the entire globe works on his ideas and finds ways to better it thus giving him new and fresh inputs from all over the globe. That way he gets their viewpoint on the same and this helps him pivot his strategies according to what the customers say.
He knows that millions of hands will allow him to better his approach towards world-changing solutions.
12. Prioritize Product Over Sales Pitch
Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg all agree that focusing your efforts on creating a better product is more important than trying to sell it to the market.
Musk states that the central idea of every business must be its product and not its sales pitch. Sales should be your second priority.
If your product is good, selling it will follow without exerting energy and marketing costs. Creating a good product should be your first strategy. Once it’s done, the market will buy it without spending a lot of marketing dollars.
Rather than spending all your energy on selling the product, focus on how you can make the product better, and cost-efficient, and create a seamless user experience.
13. Become an Expert to Lead Innovation
When Elon Musk asked his team if it was possible to create better affordable batteries, they said it could be done.
In the next step, Musk learned everything he could about batteries, literally everything.
Then he unpacked the latest batteries and studied them, trying to find ways to improve them to store more energy and be more cost-efficient.
The same goes for his cars, if he would produce the cars as most companies do, he wouldn’t be able to get prices down and make it an overall cost-efficient vehicle for the common man.
14. Persist and Never Give Up on Your Passion
If you think something is important and you should work on it, then you should work on it.
It doesn’t matter if the odds are against you if you are doing it the wrong way over and over again, the only thing that matters is persistence.
You need to love what you do to not give up on it unless you’re forced to. Elon Musk loves his companies so much that he puts all of his energy into getting the results he needs even when the odds are against him.
Persistence is the key component for success and loving what you do will ensure you’re persistent enough.
There you go, These were the 13 lessons every entrepreneur should learn from the legend Elon Musk.
Could you be the next Elon Musk?
Elon Musk is definitely the most future-oriented person in the world. Understanding how he is so successful and productive at all times is something quite fascinating to learn.
If you put all your efforts, all your time, and all your energy into your field, surely you may become like Musk, but that also means you might have to struggle every day of your life without a break.
Could you do that?
Don’t waste time and start implementing all of the lessons Elon Musk follows and you’re sure to get crazy successful real soon. I assure you!
What do you think about Elon Musk and his immensely tough work hours? Let me know in the comments below.
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