Failure is an Option

bydaniel44

769 followers

12 years ago

That's a weird title when most people would say that failure is not an option.

For Elon Musk, that was one of his options.

Has anybody seen the 60 Minute segment on Elon Musk?

One of his quotes during the interview was: "I though we would most likely fail..." "If something's important enough you should try. Even if you - the probable outcome is failure."

Elon Musk put all of his $180 million of proceeds from the sale of Paypal to Ebay on his new projects, Space X and Tesla.

Ambitious indeed, he went after markets that nobody else would dream of. He started a privately held space rocket company and in an electric car company. These are not easy companies to start and maintain. You have so many established car companies with deep pockets. You have the technical obstacles on both of these companies.

By 2007, he was broke. Space X had three failures, but the fourth flight was flawless and NASA awarded Space X with a contract. Tesla has also turned around and the stock price has now gained 450% in the past 12 months.

Lesson gained is that if we're afraid of failure and do not even attempt to do something to improve our financial circumstances, then life will not change and you will not learn from your failures. Elon Musk's space ship failed numerous times, but lessons were learned from those failures and they ended up refining and developing a working space ship.

Lessons were also learned from failures on the Telsa Roadstes until refining and redesign has brought more success to Tesla Motors.