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But he had the wherewithal to leverage his abilities at the time to get what he needed to continue. It's easy to knock this back as chance, but clearly he's shr

But he had the wherewithal to leverage his abilities at the time to get what he needed to continue. It's easy to knock this back as chance, but clearly he's shrewd enough to get where he wants to get. I take my hat off to him. Each of us has a unique blend of skills, talents, traits and personality. It is up to each of us to figure out how to leverage those to get what we value most in life. If money is what you're after, it's there for the taking, all you have to do is figure out how, if it's power, that's there too. Nothing worth having in life comes easily, it's hard work, that's a given, you just need to figure out how to get it - and that's the game that makes this life so interesting.

tw04 12y ago
I'm sorry but it had wayyy more to do with chance than that. He happened to be in California in 1995 when the bubble started. He was of an age where he could take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 job. If Musk were 40 with 3 kids and a mortgage and he had packed everything up to move to California to try to create a startup and make it big, I'd totally agree with you. The fact he was at the right place at the right time at the right age isn't anything that was under his control in the least (outside of perhaps choosing to go to Standford over other options available to him).
- balabaster 12y ago
  He wouldn't have done it that way. You're not looking at him with a wide enough lens. People who are rich aren't rich by chance. They're rich because they observe the way things are, they take the opportunities that are presented to them as they are able to take them. Sure, he was in California in 1995, he was in the position to take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 he jumped on the bandwagon. If he were 40 with 3 kids and he was just as shrewd as he was when he got his start, he'd have jumped on a different bandwagon - perhaps the realty bandwagon, become a realtor, flipped multibillion dollar houses on loans and still got rich, or he'd have become a stock broker, made himself money that way and turned that into a billion dollars - who knows, the opportunities are endless. You've just gotta look at things in the right way. Self made billionaires are opportunists. They are smart. They are shrewd. They look at the big picture. For every reason they're told they can't do something, they find a solution, they don't see obstacles as deal breakers, they're just speed bumps, irritations that need to be resolved/removed, hoops to be jumped through to get where they're going. They look for the next possibility and insert themselves where they need to in order to leverage what they have to get where they need to go. So you see it doesn't have as much to do with chance as you might think. What was chance was the bubble occurring. But Elon making use of that opportunity when it presented itself was anything but chance, that was all Elon. He spied an opportunity and rode it until he was shrewd enough to get off the elevator... which is what he's still doing. Finding opportunity and leveraging it to make his next billion dollars.
- mehrdada 12y ago
  > He happened to be in California in 1995 This is an especially disingenuous characterization, considering he jumped through the hoops to immigrate to the US and go to California, which means he observed and realized that CA is where he should be and worked towards getting there (he's been very vocal about him coming to North America being one of the most important decisions he made and that he quite planned for it). He didn't happen to wake up one day in CA. Yes, many people are luckier and they happen to be born in Silicon Valley to affluent parents, but the fact that most (almost all) of them have not achieved what Elon has achieved hints at a the use of a stretched definition of the word "luck."

tw04 12y ago

I'm sorry but it had wayyy more to do with chance than that. He happened to be in California in 1995 when the bubble started. He was of an age where he could take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 job. If Musk were 40 with 3 kids and a mortgage and he had packed everything up to move to California to try to create a startup and make it big, I'd totally agree with you. The fact he was at the right place at the right time at the right age isn't anything that was under his control in the least (outside of perhaps choosing to go to Standford over other options available to him).

balabaster 12y ago
He wouldn't have done it that way. You're not looking at him with a wide enough lens. People who are rich aren't rich by chance. They're rich because they observe the way things are, they take the opportunities that are presented to them as they are able to take them. Sure, he was in California in 1995, he was in the position to take a chance at a startup rather than have a 9-5 he jumped on the bandwagon. If he were 40 with 3 kids and he was just as shrewd as he was when he got his start, he'd have jumped on a different bandwagon - perhaps the realty bandwagon, become a realtor, flipped multibillion dollar houses on loans and still got rich, or he'd have become a stock broker, made himself money that way and turned that into a billion dollars - who knows, the opportunities are endless. You've just gotta look at things in the right way. Self made billionaires are opportunists. They are smart. They are shrewd. They look at the big picture. For every reason they're told they can't do something, they find a solution, they don't see obstacles as deal breakers, they're just speed bumps, irritations that need to be resolved/removed, hoops to be jumped through to get where they're going. They look for the next possibility and insert themselves where they need to in order to leverage what they have to get where they need to go. So you see it doesn't have as much to do with chance as you might think. What was chance was the bubble occurring. But Elon making use of that opportunity when it presented itself was anything but chance, that was all Elon. He spied an opportunity and rode it until he was shrewd enough to get off the elevator... which is what he's still doing. Finding opportunity and leveraging it to make his next billion dollars.
mehrdada 12y ago
> He happened to be in California in 1995 This is an especially disingenuous characterization, considering he jumped through the hoops to immigrate to the US and go to California, which means he observed and realized that CA is where he should be and worked towards getting there (he's been very vocal about him coming to North America being one of the most important decisions he made and that he quite planned for it). He didn't happen to wake up one day in CA. Yes, many people are luckier and they happen to be born in Silicon Valley to affluent parents, but the fact that most (almost all) of them have not achieved what Elon has achieved hints at a the use of a stretched definition of the word "luck."