Elon Musk’s Work Ethics Will Give You Goosebumps!!
22 Hours a day?
How many years?
I was working in the end, so seven days a week, sleeping in the factory. I worked every day from the paint shop, general assembly, body shop.
You ever worry about yourself imploding?
Like, it just isn’t too much?
Yeah, absolutely. No one should put this many hours into work. This is not good. People should not work this hard. I don’t know. They should not do this. It’s very painful.
Painful in what sense?
It’s because my, it hurts my brain and my heart. Toots. This is not recommended for anyone. I just did it because if I didn’t do it, then Tazlo, good chance, I would die. I don’t think it necessarily wanted to be me. It’s very hard to turn it off all the time. It doesn’t stop. When I was young, I didn’t really know what I was going to do, when I got older. I think when I was, I don’t know, if I was six or something, I thought I was insane because it was clear that other people did not, what their mind wasn’t exploding with ideas, which was just strange. It was like, hmm, I’m strange. Eventually, I thought the idea of inventing things would be really cool. The reason I thought that was because I read a quote from Authy Clock, which said that, especially advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that’s really true. If you go back, say, 300 years, the things that we take for granted today would be, you’d be burned at the stake for being able to fly. That’s crazy. Being able to see over long distances, being able to communicate, this is stuff that really would be considered magic in time has passed. If I can do some of those things, basically, if I can advance technology, that’s like magic, and that would be really cool.
Were you a little naive when you thought I could easily build an electric car and a rocket?
I didn’t think it would be easy. Like I said, I thought they would probably fail. But creating a company is almost like having a child.
So it’s sort of like, how do you say your child should not have food?
So once you have the company, you have to feed it and nurse it, and take care of it even if it ruins you. Yeah. But I suppose there wasn’t tough times in the end of 2008.
How did you get through that period of crisis?
Yeah. 2008. We just break for a second. Oh, sure. Oh, fucks you. You want to wait a little while? Yeah, sure, but was worth it. Sure, sure. I mean, sure, but was worth it. One of the most difficult choices I have ever faced in life was in 2008. I think I had maybe 30 million dollars left, or 30 or 40 million dollars left in 2008. I had two choices. I could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die, or split it between the two companies. And I split it between the two companies, and both my time. And where you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something, if only something, it’s like a child.
And so it’s like, which one am I going to let one start to death?
I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I put it on between the two. Fortunately, thank goodness they’re both came through. You know, with Tesla, we’re like trying to make things that people love, and how many things keep by that you really love. That really give you joy. So rare. So rare. I wish there were more things. That’s what we’re trying to do. Just make things that somebody loves. Yes, doing something useful for other people that I like doing. Generally, starting a business, I’d say number one is have a high-paying threshold. That’s it. There’s a friend of mine who’s got a good saying, which is that starting a company is like eating glasses, staring into the abyss. That’s generally what happens. Because when you first start a company, there’s lots of optimism, and things are great. And then so happiness at first is high. Then you encounter all sorts of issues, and happiness will steadily decline. And then you’ll go through a whole world of hurt. And then eventually, if you succeed, and in most cases, you will not succeed, and Tesla almost didn’t succeed in very close together, then if you succeed, then after a long time, you will finally get back to happiness. And
I want to know, what is the one thing that is surprised you about your life?
Well, I certainly am surprised by the whole thing, honestly. I certainly didn’t expect to be to be one of these things to happen, honestly. In fact, the only reason I started a company back in 1995, and you’re a company was because I couldn’t get it. There were only a few internet companies, and I couldn’t get a job at any of them. So I tried to get a job at Netscape, and Santa Marzmy, and I tried hanging out in the lobby, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. And then I was like, okay, well, I guess I’ll have to start a company, because I can’t get a job anywhere. Really liking what you do, whatever area that you get into, given that even if you’re the best, the best, there’s always a chance of failure. So I think it’s important that you really like whatever you’re doing. If you don’t like it, life is too short. If you like what you’re doing, you think about it even when you’re not working. It’s something that your mind is drawn to, and if you don’t like it, you just really can’t make it work, I think. Well, you want to do, particularly if you’re starting a company, you need to work super hard.
So what does super hard mean?
When my brother and I were starting our first company, I didn’t have any money. In fact, I had negative money. I had huge student debt, but in fact, I couldn’t afford a place to stay in an office. So instead of getting an apartment, we just rented a small office and we slept on the couch. And we showered at the YMCA, and there was an ISP on the floor below us, just like the little tiny ISP, and we drilled a hole through the floor and connected a normal room cable. That gave us our internet activity for like a hundred bucks a month. And we’re so hot up, we had just one computer. So the website was up during the day, and I was coding at night. Seven days a week all the time. And I briefly had a girlfriend in that period, and in order to be with me, she had to sleep in the office. So work hard, like, I mean, every waking hour, that’s the thing I would say, particularly if you’re starting a company.
It’s very important to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. And this is something that people tend to avoid because it’s painful. When friends get a product, I say, look, don’t tell me what you like, tell me what you don’t like. Otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn’t like. Right. This guy’s going to say, oh, I love this and that. And then leave out the, this is the stuff I don’t like list. And sometimes even your enemies give you good negative feedback. So I actually went to, I went to Russia three times to look at buying a refurbished ICBM. I can tell you it was very weird going there in 2000, late 2001, 2002, going to the Russian rocket forces and saying, I’d like to buy two of your biggest rockets. They thought I was crazy, but I did have money. So that was, that was okay. One good friend of mine collected a whole series of videos of rockets blowing up and made me watch those. He just didn’t want me to lose all my money. For SpaceX, the first three launches failed. We’re just barely able to scrape together enough parts and money to do the fourth launch. That fourth launch had failed. We would have been dead. I tried very hard to get the right expertise in for SpaceX. I tried hard to find a great chief engineer for the rocket, but the good chief engineers wouldn’t join. And the bad ones, well, there was no point in hanging in. So I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket. So if I could have found somebody better than we would have maybe had less than three failures.
When you had that third failure in a row, did you think, I need to pack this in?
Never.
Why not?
I don’t ever give up. I mean, I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated. You know, there are American heroes who don’t like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Sernan, have both testified against commercial spaceflight in the way that you’re developing it. And I wonder what you think of that. I was very sad to see that because those guys are. Yeah. Those guys are yours and mine, so it’s really tough. No, I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware that we’re doing. And I think that would change their mind.
They inspired you to do this, didn’t they?
Yes. And to see them casting stones in your direction. Ziffgelt.
Did you expect them to cheer you on?
So they’re hoping they would. When critics say you can’t do this, your answer to them is we’ve done it.
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Thanks.