Why Elon Musk Is So Successful

“It’s hard to change destiny. You can’t just do it from nine to five.” - Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a workaholic.

Over his thirty year career he built and/or founded:

• Paypal - A global payments network

• Tesla - The world’s largest electric car maker

• SpaceX - A space rocket company

• OpenAI - The world’s foremost AI company

• Neuralink - A company that develops interfaces for the brain

• The Boring Company - A business responsible for building Musk’s eccentric ideas that don’t thematically fit into his other business entities

• And a few other smaller businesses

Not to mention he bought Twitter, the global town square.

A question often asked of Musk is whether or not he is happy. Afterall, what's the point of achieving everything if you can’t enjoy anything? 

While Musk is capable of willing into existence economical space travel, fashionable electric vehicles, and cutting edge artificial intelligence apps, the one thing that eludes him is a prolonged sense of joy.

When asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin whether or not he was happy Musk replied “I can remember even in happy moments when I was a kid, that it just feels like there’s just a rage of forces in my mind constantly.”

Matt Levine said of Musk “Nobody makes being a billionaire look like less fun than Elon Musk.”

I think there is a link between Musk’s perpetual unhappiness and his success. They are two strands of the same string.

Small but successful entrepreneurs do something like this: they start a business, experience hardships in the building of that business, overcome that hardship, and achieve success. 

Their success allows them to fulfill personal goals of securing themselves and their families financially. They may buy a nice home, drive decent cars, and send their kids to good colleges. All of these goals are achieved through their hard work and they draw immense satisfaction from these achievements.

Musk’s goals are of a cosmic variety. He aims to make humans a multi planetary species and each small step towards that goal is a reminder of how far he has to go; a reminder of how little time, on a cosmic scale, he has left. 

For most, a moment of achievement is one of pride. It is a moment to savor how far they’ve come. For Musk, a moment of achievement is one of distress. It is a reminder of how far he has to go.

The loft of Musk’s goals mean that each success is dissatisfactory. And because he is perpetually dissatisfied, Elon is in an infinite loop of progress that benefits mankind while almost certainly crushes any hope he has for contentment and happiness. 

His emotional state and inner peace are the primary collateral damage of his grand ambitions.

In Morgan Housel’s book Same As Ever  he describes the cycle of success in the business world:

• Paranoia leads to success because it keeps you on your toes.

• But paranoia is stressful so you abandon it quickly once you achieve success.

• Now you’ve abandoned what made you successful and you begin to decline which is even more stressful.

This is the natural trajectory of any large business and how could it be another way? People strive to succeed so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labor. And if they can’t enjoy those fruits, what was the purpose of the effort in the first place? Yet their enjoyment of success is what sows the seeds of their downfall.

Musk is wired differently. His trajectory is not cyclical because he is incapable of relaxation, satisfaction, and therefore regression. Because Musk is always dissatisfied with his achievements and unable to enjoy them, he is able to progress further than anyone else. His success cycle isn’t a rise and decline, it is a continual rise riddled with stress.

Musk’s eternal dissatisfaction is the fuel that drives his prolific achievements but it’s also the burden that condemns him to a life of misery.

So what does Musk do that other business leaders don’t? What does he do that ensures his companies will always progress?

Team Size

Many large companies over hire because ego driven managers optimize for the metric “how many people do I manage?” Musk, on the other hand, wants his “teams to be scrappier, more nimble, and to launch fire drill surges that extrude all obstacles.” While the traditional large company optimizes for inflating the management’s ego, Musk optimizes for productivity per employee.

Employee Treatment

Many large companies reward veteran employees for their hard work with cushy salaries, perks, and corner offices. Musk believes you are only as good as your next breakthrough and has a regular level of churn in his workforce. The purpose of this churn is to rid his companies of a concept he calls “phoning in rich”. Phoning in rich is when employees get wealthy, buy vacation homes, and “no longer hunger to stay all night on the factory floor”.

Musk has an operationally perfect level of empathy and charisma in that he can inspire a group towards a larger mission while retaining an emotionless state when making difficult decisions like letting go of longtime employees who no longer benefit the company. 

Walter Isaacson said of Musk’s off-putting and occasionally downright cruel behavior “Might it even be beneficial in some ways, when it comes to running companies where the mission is more important than the individual sensitivities?”

Manufacturing Urgency

In Same As Ever, Morgan Housel said “You cannot compare the incentives of Silicon Valley coders trying to get you to click on ads to Manhattan Project physicists trying to end a war that threatened the country’s existence. You can’t compare their capabilities.” 

This holds true for engineers at SpaceX vs. those at Boeing. The capabilities of Musk employees far exceed those of their peers simply because they have higher perceived stakes. Musk is excellent at convincing his employees that they are in life or death situations that demand their all.

Many large companies lose a sense of urgency as they reach their goals. Their best is no longer required to survive so they begin to coast. Musk on the other hand is a master at manufacturing situations where employee’s best is not only encouraged but required. He regularly reminds employees that the very existence of mankind rests in their hands and if their goals aren’t achieved the humans species may cease to be.

Musk famously offered George Hotz, the designer of the vision system for Tesla, a $12M reward if he could build the system the next day. For each month that passed Hotz’s potential reward decreased by $1M. He wanted Hotz to feel the psychological pain of watching his reward fade because he knew Hotz would work that much harder. The prospect of pain and loss are far more visceral and lasting feelings than glee and happiness so they are more effective motivators. Elon Musk is good at inducing the former traits.

Leadership Style

Many large companies view their CEO as the outward facing image of the company, someone palatable, quick on their feet, and charismatic. Musk views the CEO as someone who is unlikable, willing to make difficult decisions, and very confrontational.

When Musk acquired Twitter, he refused to retain the sitting CEO, Parag Agrawal, because the man was too nice. Difficult decisions needed to be made at Twitter and “kindness” was not a quality Musk felt was advantageous to a leader turning around a business of Twitter’s size. Musk said of Agrawal “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon and Parag is not that.”

Fiercely Anti-Bureaucracy

Many large companies experience crippling bureaucracy as they grow. Musk insists that all rules and regulations be assigned to a single person, not some nebulous group, so that they can be questioned and railed against.

Tom Robbins said of bureaucracy “Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.”

Elon knows this and therefore insists that personal responsibility is attached, by name, to everything. “Musk has a rule about responsibility: every part, every process, and every specification needs to have a name attached.”

Disdain For Stability

Many large companies crave stability. Their main focus is to keep the ship steady. This is antithetical to Musk’s personality. When things are going smoothly is often when Elon is the most brooding and likely to to make erratic decisions.

In June 2018 when Tesla achieved its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars per week Musk began to lash out - going on a bizarre crusade against a man who made fun of him on CNN.

When Elon became the richest person in the world in the Fall of 2021 he attended a birthday party for his brother where he experienced depression that manifested itself in physical pangs of pain.

When Musk celebrated New Year’s Eve with his family at the end of 2022 Musk seemed jovial initially only to then go blank staring at the stars saying “Got to get Starship into orbit. We’ve got to get Starship into orbit.”

Walter Isaacson said of Musk “What should have been good times were unnerving for him. It prompted him to launch surges, stir up dramas, throw himself into battles he could have bypassed, and bite off new endeavors.”

While this quality doesn’t always serve him well it does serve as an armor against stagnancy.

New York Times reporter David Gelles, asked Musk if things were improving. Musk replied “Yes, for Tesla, but from a personal standpoint, the worst is yet to come.”

Musk’s life shows that an unrelenting drive for super ultra-success is often a condemnation to a life of misery. 

Anonymous Twitter account Fed Speak said “The purpose of life is to experience things for which you will later experience nostalgia.” A former SpaceX employee said of Musk “Elon is not one for looking back and being sentimental. He is not good at that type of empathy.”

There is nothing that Musk isn’t willing to sacrifice in pursuit of his business goals whether that be his personal health, marriages, or relationships with his children. There aren’t enough hours in the day to lead six companies worth a combined hundred of billions and talk to your 10 kids daily. 

The man’s life is not one that I envy but thank God he exists.

It is people like him who drive things forward. It is people like him who are wired to seek out conflict and work on new things that cause innovation even at their personal expense.