Are you aspiring to reach the same heights of entrepreneurial success as Elon Musk?
It might sound far-fetched, but in this article I’ll explain how you can become a successful serial entrepreneur.
Not only that, but we are going to explore the most vital characteristic that Elon Musk possesses, that even he might not be aware of.
Let’s get into it!
In previous articles on this blog, we’ve talked about how 90% of businesses fail, and what you can do to move those odds in your favour.
But it’s safe to say, being an entrepreneur is not exactly a safe career choice, to say the least.
And the odds of being successful with multiple businesses are even worse still.
If you look at it in very simple terms, if you have a 10% chance of being successful with one startup, and a 10% chance of being successful with the second, then the chance of you being successful with both is only 1%.
And the more businesses you try in a row, the worse your chances get! Your chances reduce by 90% each and every time.
That is, unless you can find a way to escape the odds. And luckily, there is a way to do that. More on that soon.
The most noticeable thing about Elon Musk is how unusual he is.
From Zip2 to Paypal, from SpaceX to Tesla and Twitter (now X), Musk has gone from success to success.
There’s a very good reason that he is always a contender for the title of Richest Man in the World. And that reason is that the serial success he has achieved is extremely uncommon.
Off the top of my head, I can think of about 8 businesses that Elon Musk has controlled in some capacity, give or take. So continuing our crude math, we can multiply the 10% chance of success by itself 8 times, resulting in:
0.000001%, or 1 in a million.
In simplified terms, this is the chance of a serial entrepreneur being as successful as Elon Musk.
And although these crude calculations are not intended to be taken fully seriously, it does seem quite fitting for us to call Musk a ‘one in a million’ entrepreneur.
In order to achieve his extraordinary serial success, Elon Musk fires on all cylinders. He has every quality needed to be a top-level entrepreneur.
Here are some of the traits possessed by Musk that make key contributions to his one-in-a-million status:
When it comes to imagining the future, Elon is unmatched. He has a very ambitious take on the future, whether it be the global transition to sustainable energy, or his goal of establishing a colony on Mars.
If you really think about it, the goals Elon sets are outrageous. Others on the rich-list don’t even come close when it comes to the scale of the goals they set.
Elon’s tolerance of risk is unusually high. Both Tesla and SpaceX were very close to collapse when he chose to invest.
Many entrepreneurs would choose safer ventures, but Elon takes a unique approach to risk by allowing his very strong conviction about the ‘big idea’ to override standard models of risk.
This is one of the most important qualities he has. Elon is a terrific innovator. Acting on a strong basis of scientific knowledge, his brain is able to be truly creative, and he has the complete thinking skill set required to see his ideas through to successful implementation.
Many times in business, you just need the stamina to see things through to the end. There are countless obstacles to overcome, and Elon has demonstrated many times that he is resilient enough to get through the hard times.
Elon has been through plenty of failures and setbacks, and being able to survive all of these is an essential quality for any entrepreneur.
Elon Musk isn’t just a creative thinker. He is an innovative thinker. We’ve discussed the key difference between creativity and innovation in other articles, and it can be summed up pretty well with one word - execution.
Brilliant creative ideas can only be made truly valuable when they are successfully innovated. In other words, they need to be tested, tweaked, and fully implemented in the real world.
Elon is just as involved in the operational side of his businesses as he is with the big ideas that drive them.
When it comes to leadership, it could be said that Elon takes a pretty unconventional approach.
He likes to get his hands dirty, because as we just said previously, he gets very involved with the operational side of his businesses.
When it comes to technical tasks, Elon has often been seen working alongside his engineers and other employees to help grapple with the problems.
Tying into the point on risk, he also leads by example, by taking very personal risks and gambles. By putting himself on the line, employees have a very good chance of feeling inspired.
I haven’t had the chance to speak to Elon Musk yet, so I don’t know if this is something he is fully aware of or not.
There’s a very good chance that he just naturally has what it takes to succeed without being fully conscious of what it is that he has.
But the secret to serial success as an entrepreneur is actually shockingly simple.
It’s about decoding the core-level mechanics of entrepreneurial success, and then repeating those mechanics over and over again.
The secret of being a successful entrepreneur, serial or not, is understanding the exact thinking and decision processes that are involved when a business is successful.
Once you understand them, all you need to do is implement them. And if you’re going for serial entrepreneurship, you just repeat that implementation over and over.
The great challenge here is that thinking, which leads to all our decisions, is a hidden process, and every individual, even Elon Musk, has their own preferences and biases when it comes to how they think.
Without a light to shine on your thinking to make it visible, and without a language to describe what you see in your mind, there is no way to match up your mind with the highly challenging task of being an entrepreneur.
It’s a very difficult bridge to gap without a serious toolkit, so you can see why 90% of businesses end up failing.
But here’s the ultimate cheat code you need. Armed with this cheat code, you can throw out these terrible odds and get real, true control over the success of any business you start.
This will give you the light you need to see inside your own mind, and the language you need to describe what you see, so you can then steer your thinking and decisions exactly where they need to go to make your business, or businesses, work as well as they deserve to.
The first step for you now is to figure out how your own thinking works, in a very personal sense. You can do this by checking out your Thinking-Intentions Profile here at Effective Intelligence.
Click here if you’d like to learn more.
See you in the next one!
