Elon Musk a biography by Ashlee Vance.

1. Persistence- he just never gives up. Even the way he pursued Justine he was not intimidated by her beauty. He knew he had to keep going until she said yes to him. Most people would give up after a certain amount of tries but he kept pursuing her relentless. How you do one thing is how you do everything. This carried on to all aspects of his life. He never gave up when he was able to run out of funding or when his critics did not believe in his space exploration ventures. He was met with a ton of criticism and setbacks but do not let that stop him from continuing to fight for his vision and beliefs in making the world a cleaner place with his renewable energy efforts in addition to bringing America’s passion for exploring outside of our planet with wanting to colonize Mars and sending people out to space.
2. Vision- he is always creating and setting intentions while following through with what he says he is going to create and actually working tirelessly to get there.
3. Authenticity- Elon is a very unique and sometimes combative person. He knows he needs to work on his personal interactions but he is also never going to apologize but he knows that he has to listen to himself in order to create the magnitude of what he wants in life.
4. Eccentric- the distinctive personality traits and nature of what he says and how he comes off makes him stand out because no one else would say or do what he does. It makes him an interesting guy to be around because you always want to know what’s on his mind.
5. Diversify your portfolio. Because he has a piece in so many different projects. He is a billionaire for a reason. When one doesn’t work his life is not to end up if one of his projects crash and burn. It is safe to say that Elon is going to go down in history as one of the biggest and important people of all time.
6. Reinvention- because he kicked off as CEO so many times in many companies. He had to reinvent himself by noticing and building awareness around his communication style and being able to work on building his emotional intelligence and empathetic leadership skills. He knows it and is willing to learn more to become a better leader every day.
7. Being both business and scientific savvy. Elon has a unique blend of being a software engineer but also being able to market and sell his companies(and importantly his vision to the masses). He is a master of marketing, using the media to become rich and famous but can also code out with the best of them.
8. Passionate-Elon when talking about space exploration, disrupting industries such as the traditional banking business model, or changing the way people think about energy. There is no doubt that his passion helped him gather many followers and has helped him raise millions of dollars in funding.
9. Despite obstacles, continue to move ahead. He and his wife lost a child at a very early stage and was able to move forward by continuing to have 5 more kids. He didn’t let that destroy his life and his ability to bounce back is a tremendously valuable skill that applies everywhere in life.
10. Networking- Elon is the king of surrounding himself with movers and shakers, people that know their respective industries well and have the drive to create and have the want to disruptive old traditional flawed billion dollar industries in an almost hubris matter of a couple of years. There were many people that did not get along with Elon but bought into his vision because they knew what he is capable of from past experiences.  

There are so many things to take away from Elon Musk but I would say a quick summary would be surround yourself with the best, always be your authentic self even if it means that you will get bad PR. Any PR is good when you are playing at that level on that stage.

Also that Elon is not afraid to dream big, there are thousands of people that still do not believe in him, perhaps they are afraid his dreams and are not able to be with change.

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