Elon Musk's Top 10 Rules for Success

what was your biggest failure and how did it change you I have to really think hard about that failure never heard of it there's your answer well there's a ton of failures along the way that's for sure for SpaceX first three launches failed and we're just barely able to scrape together enough parts and and money to do the fourth launch that fourth launch had failed we would have been dead so multiple failures along the way 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 hiring them 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 need motivation watch a top 10 with believe Nation hey it's EV Carmichael and I watch these videos every day because I need them for motivation being around successful entrepreneurs every morning helps me believe that I can do great things too it's like you're morning coffee but for your

goals kickstarting your day with a blast of positivity so here is a challenge for you try watching One video every morning for the next 30 days and let's find out together if they help you do great things too if you're leave a # believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you so today let's learn from one of the best Elon Musk and our take on his top 10 rules of success believe rule number two is never stop learning when you think about education and self-education what do you recommend I'd encourage people to

read a lot of books just read like basically try to ingest as much information as you can uh and try to Al just develop a good general knowledge um so so you at least have like a rough lay of the land of the the knowledge landscape um like try to learn a little bit about a lot of things um because you might not know what you're really interested how would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it peripheral exp exploration of broadly of of the knowledge landscape um and

and you talk to people from different walks of life and different uh Industries and professions and skills and OCC occupations like just try learn as much as possible like I said I I would encourage people to read broadly um in many different subject areas um and and and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and and what you're interested in so people may may be good at something but or they may have ski skill at a particular thing but they don't like doing it m um so you want to try

to find a thing where you have you're that's a good a good uh combination of of your of the things that you're inherently good at but you also like doing rule number three is look for negative feedback it's very important to to seek out uh to actively seek out um and listen very carefully to negative feedback um and this is something that people tend to avoid because it's it's painful um but but I think this is a very common mistake is to to not actively seek out and listen to uh negative feedback where do you

do that do you go into forums do you go into Twitter like what what are your areas where you go to look for feedback on let's say the Tesla well it's like every everyone I talk to is um in fact when um when friends get a product I said look I don't tell me what you like tell me what you don't like right um and and because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn't like right it's it's going to say oh I love this and that and and and then leave

out the this is the stuff I don't like list because he want to be your friend want you know doesn't want to offend you so um so you really need to to to to to to sort of coax negative feedback and you should and you know that if somebody's your is your friend or at least not your enemy and they're giving you negative feedback then they may be wrong but it's coming from a good place um and sometimes even your enemies give you good negative feedback rule number four is a magic an outcome you have

to imagine an outcome in order to head in that direction um and science fiction explores a lot of different ideas so um it can be you know helpful as a source of inspiration um and and you know like books TV shows movies I they're all uh I think sources of inspiration um I mean most of the movies and TV shows that space are totally wrong uh but uh but they still have interesting ideas like the Star Trek Communicator um was uh an inspiration for the cell phone yeah with the flip right right yeah exactly um

I'm going to in fact the weird thing is like like the like the phones we have in our parket fastly exceed what was on Star Trek also to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video the worksheet will highlight our favorite lessons from the video that will inspire you to remember what you learned today and actually apply them the worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results

if you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video absolutely for free there's a link in the description below go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business I'll see you there rule number five is innovate fast enough the real way I think you you actually achieve intellectual property protection is by innovating fast enough if your rate of innovation is high then you don't need to worry about protecting the IP um because other companies will be copying something that you did years ago mhm um and that's fine you know

um just make sure your your rate of innovation is fast um speed is really speed of innovation is is what is what matters um and I do I do say this to my teams like quite a lot that Innovation per unit time as I go Innovation per year if you want to say like is is what matters not Innovation absent time because if you wanted to make say um 100% Improvement in something and that took a 100 years or one year that's radically different so um it's like what what is your rate of innovation that

that that matters and is the rate of innovation um is that accelerating or decelerating um and a weird thing happens when companies get big is that most companies um or organizations the bigger they get they tend to get less Innovative um not just less Innovative on a per person basis but less Innovative in the absolute um and I think this is probably because the incentive structure is not uh is not there for Innovation um it it's not enough to use words to encourage Innovation the incentive structure must be aligned with that that's fundamental rule number

six is be comfortable with failing I think failure is bad um I don't think it's good um but if if if something's important enough then you you do it even though the risk of failure is High um and and so I think my advice if somebody is wants to start a company is they should bear in mind that the most likely outcome is is that it's not going to work and they should reconcile themselves to that POS strong possibility um and they should only do it if they feel that they they they are really compelled

to do it you know right um because it's it's it's going the way starting a company works is like usually in the beginning it's the very beginning it's kind of fun um and then it's really hellish for for a number of years you talked about chewing glass yeah there's there's a a friend of mine who's a successful entrepreneur um and uh started actually his career around the same time as I did and he he has a good good good phrase his name is Bly uh um he said yeah you're starting a company is like eating

glass and staring into the abyss um and and you agree with that generally true um yeah and and and and if you don't eat the glass you're not going to be successful rule number seven is find your drive why do we need to build a city on Mars with a million people on it in your lifetime which I I think is kind of what you've said you'd love to do yeah I think it's important to have um a future that is inspiring and appealing I mean I just think that there like there have to be

reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live like why do you want to live what what's the point what what inspires you what what do you love about the future and if if we're not out there if the future does not include being out there Among the Stars um and being a multiplet species I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future that we're going to have I think the the value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated no question um but I want to be clear I

like I'm not trying to be anyone's savior uh that is not the I'm just trying to think about the future and not be sad rule number eight is expect success generally you want to invar on something it's desirable to figure out if success is at least one of the possibilities right exactly CU for sure failure is one of the possibilities yes um but but ideally you want to try to bracket it and say success is in the envelope of outcomes yeah um and I wasn't quite sure if that was the case um I mean I

think test on an academic level would have been quite likely because you can publish some useless paper and uh most papers are pretty useless um you know we have a few don't take a sorry I mean how many PhD papers are actually used by someone ever um I mean it's good point percentage wise it's not it's not good uh and um so so it could have been one of those outomes where uh you add some leaves to the tree of knowledge yeah okay um and and that leaf is nope it's not possible like right there

goes seven years of my life um so that so that was one One path and I was prepared to do that but then the internet was the internet came along and I was like okay the internet I'm pretty sure success is one of the possible outcomes and it seemed like I could either do a do sort of do a PhD and watch the internet happen or I could participate in help build it in some fashion you know put a you know like I just couldn't understand the idea of watching it happen yeah so that that's

uh so I decided to put things on hold uh and start an Internet company and that was kind of a we worked on internet uh like publishing software maps and directions Yellow Pages kind of things rule number nine is don't Reason by analogy I think it's also important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy so the normal way that we conduct Our Lives is we we we we Reason by analogy um it's we're doing this because it's like something else that was done or it's like what um other people are doing me too

type ideas yeah it's slight iterations on on on a theme um and and uh and it's because it's it's it's kind of mentally easier to Reason by analogy rather than from first principles but by first principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world and what that really means is you kind of boil things down to the most fundament mental truths and and say okay what are we sure is true or or as sure as possible is true and then reason up from there uh that takes a lot more mental energy um

give me an example of that like what's one thing that you've you've done that on that you feels work for you sure so um somebody could say um in fact people do uh that battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they will always be cuz that's the way they've been in the past um you're like well no that's that's pretty dumb you know because if if uh if you appli that reasoning to anything new that then you wouldn't be able to to ever get to that new thing and Rule Number 10 the

last time before before a very special bonus clip is manage your time wisely so you're running you're CEO of two companies you're chairman of Solar City talk about time management how on Earth do you do this well do you get any sleep uh yeah sometimes not enough sleep is is really great uh cuz cuz if I find if I don't get enough sleep then I'm I'm quite grumpy um I mean obviously I think most people are that way um and and and also um like I try to sort of figure out what's the right amount

of sleep because I I found I could have I could drop a a certain threshold of sleep and although I'd be awake more hours and I could sustain it I would get less done because um mental acurity would be affected um so I found generally the right number for me is around 6 to 6 and half hours on average per night um that's not too bad yeah right and any other tips on average though right any other tips on on just managing to run two companies simultaneously I mean do you do you find I mean

I know you're up here Monday Tuesday is it all Tesla when you're up in Silicon Valley and all SpaceX Wednesday Thursday it's having a sort of um having a smartphone is incredibly helpful because that means you can do email during um interstitial periods like if you're in a car you're walking in the bathroom everywhere you you can do email practically when you're awake um and uh and so that's really helpful to have email for SpaceX and Tesla integrated on on my phone um and then uh and and then it's just you have to apply a

lot of hours to actual working actually working so the way I generally do it is I'll be uh working at SpaceX on Monday and then Monday night fly to the Bay Area uh spend Tuesday and Wednesday in the Bay Area then at at Tesla and then fly back on Wednesday night it's been Thursday and Friday at SpaceX um in in in the last several months then I would fly back here on a Saturday um and either spend Saturday and Sunday at Tesla uh or spend Saturday at Tesla and Sunday at SpaceX first of all you

don't need college to learn learn stuff okay everything is available basically for free uh you can learn anything you want for free it is not a question of learning um there there is a value that colleges have which is like you know seeing whether somebody's is can somebody work hard at something including a bunch of sort of annoying homework assignments and still do their homework assignments uh and and kind of sold through and and get it done you know that's that's like the main value of college and then also you know if you probably want

to hang around with a bunch of people your own age for a while instead of going right into the workforce um so I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores but they're not for learning well in the beginning nobody wanted a Tesla I can tell you that uh the the the when we made the original sort of roads to the sports car uh people were like why would I want an electric car that's my gasoline car works fine um like no electric car is better I should try it

um and it was you know hard to get people to do a test drive first nobody knew who we were never heard of this company and like yeah we're named after Nicola Tesla you know that guy nope um um so for sure we were doing push in the beginning cuz people said there was no one telling us that they wanted an electric car so it was not it was not out of like you know it's like lots of people were coming up to me saying hey I I really want an electric car I I heard

that zero times um so people like it's like man we better make an electric car and show that these things can be good um and then people want them um you know it's like I think it's like Henry Ford said that like the you know we talk about the Model T it's like if you ask the public what they wanted that' say a faster horse mhm so if if you did like a big survey and say what hey public before automobiles what would you like it's like well I'd like my horse to go 3 m

hour faster and eat less food and uh you know be stronger and live longer and that kind of thing um there'll be basically a bunch of incremental improvements on horse um cuz people when you say like what about an automobile that car that drives itself like what are you talking about that's that sound that sounds crazy um but when you actually make an an automobile and give it to people and say okay now this is a horse where you can keep it in the barn and if you leave for a month it's still [Laughter] alive

yeah uh so carry more more weight than a horse and go further and that kind of thing so anyway the it's like when when it's a radically new product people don't know that they want it because it's just not in their in their scope I think when they first started making TVs they did a nationwide survey I think this might have been like 46 or 48 was like famous Nationwide survey will you ever buy a TV and it was like 96% of respondents said no H some some crazy number like basically everyone's like would you

buy a TV and maybe they put a price in there or something I don't know but it was famously almost everyone said they would not buy TV but they didn't know what they're talking about so the big gamechanging stuff at the beginning is a company push kind of a thing most of the time but then changes to the product over time can be a lot more customer pull kind of a focus yeah CH changes to the product over time can be um incremental changes um then the customers can certainly tell you it's good to get

customer feedback to say how can we improve the product um and once they're using it they can say okay I like this thing about it I don't like this other thing and then we can improve the product over time customer feedback after they they have the fundamental thing is is great [Music] to get 10 more incredible rules from Jack ma check the video right there next to me I think you'll love it continue to believe and I'll see you there 24 of us interview for a KFC job 23 accepted I was the only guy rejected

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