27A – Reading Reflection No. 3


Book: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance

I picked the Elon Musk book because of how impactful and important Elon has been in the last 10 years. He has changed the way space travel is done and made it much more popular. One of the things that surprised me most in the book is how Elon is originally from South Africa. I have never looked into his background before, so this surprised me. I admired how he basically started from nothing and made a name for himself through his first big company PayPal. I didn’t really ‘not’ admire anything he did. I think he is an amazing person and I respect his upbringing. I believe any entrepreneur encounters failure, and that was shown in reading this book.

I discovered through this book is that Elon had a ‘never give up’ mentality. No matter how something went he kept pushing forward. If a project failed, he would find reasons to why it failed so he can improve upon it in the future. If it succeeded, he would find ways to further improve it.

I did not really find a part of the reading that was confusing. I could see how some of the technical stuff in the book could be confusing to some who don’t have technology background though. Especially when they started talking specifics about Space X and what he does there.

If I was able to ask two questions to Elon Musk, they would be:
          How do you find the motivation/drive to pursue something even though there might be countless failures before a successful product? I would ask this question because I would find it difficult to pursue something if I failed so many times at doing it.
          Is there a secret formula behind success? I would ask this question because there are so many people who go and start their own companies but fail. I would want to know the specifics of what he did to be more successful than other companies from his own words. 

Comments

  1. Mitch ThiemannApril 13, 2018 at 10:30 PM

    Nick,

    I also didn't realize that Elon Musk was from South Africa. I always thought he was from northern Europe. I don't know if Elon Musk has a 'never give up' mentality, but rather I believe that he has an 'always learning' mentality. He never lets failure affect him because he always learns something from failure. In Elon's mind, learning is always a success. So in essence, failing is always a success if you are learning from your mistakes.

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