Homeless Billionaire
How Elon Musk doubled down on himself and almost lost… twice.

Why do you think Elon Musk is grinning so hard on the cover of Success Magazine pictured above? Do you think it is because he will be worth $15.6 billion in just a few short years? Or perhaps it is because he is on the verge of making space travel affordable. Maybe it is simply because he was named the Achiever of the Year, which is why he is on the cover to begin with?
While Elon Musk is undoubtedly overjoyed with the success that he has experienced, the real reason for the radiant smile may not be so obvious.
Elon Musk grew up loving to solve difficult problems. This passion first evolved into the field of computer programming when the internet opened a whole new world of possibility for young Musk. When he was 12 years old, he sold his first video game called Blastar for $500 dollars in 1984. This jump-started his entrepreneurial career leading to an almost unmatched path of innovation.

While most see Stanford as a gateway to a brighter future, Musk saw the classes as a hinderance standing in the way of his dreams. After only two days of graduate school at Stanford, Elon Musk would leave to boldly start up an internet company called Zip2. Musk worked tirelessly for two years with his brother on this start-up endeavor. He became a college drop out living in a dingy warehouse that he also worked in. In order to bath himself, he would have to go to a nearby stadium to use the shower. This was all in an effort to spend as little money as possible in order to keep his struggling company alive. No one had ever made large amounts of money on the internet before. Naturally, Musk gambled everything.
Zip2 would later sell for 22 million dollars. The sacrifice Musk made payed off allowing him to start PayPal. A company that revolutionized the internet by creating a new way to pay online. This brilliant piece of ingenuity would go on to be bought by Ebay landing Musk 180 million dollars from the deal.

While many would simply retire and live off the meager 180 million dollars Musk made from selling Paypal at the age of 31, he refused to become complacent. Every cent went toward Musk’s next “impossible” endeavors. From the time Musk was 12 years old he had challenged himself with difficult problems. Why stop now? He simply needed to find more challenging issues to solve. Therefore, he began searching for solutions to the world’s greatest problems.
In this pursuit, he would begin the companies Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. Musk would gain a reputation as an avid worker. In an interview with Steve Jurvetson, a Tesla Motors investor, Musk states that he used to work 100 hour work weeks before cutting back to a more reasonable 80 hours. This unrelenting determination is what bred Musk’s success. A passion for finding answers.

Musk’s work has propelled humanity further into the future at a much more rapid pace than many would have expected. While some claim that inventions are becoming harder and harder to create, Musk is defying the odds. His ingenuity refuses to be limited. Thanks to his incredible will for success, Musk has made unheard of progress in SpaceX’s Mars program. Now, instead of people seeing space as a lost frontier with NASA’s massive cutbacks, many see landing on Mars and setting up a permanent city as a very real possibility.
Musk is one of these believers.

Unfortunately, following one’s passion is often a path of pain and suffering. This monumental effort has come at a great personal cost to Musk. At times, all of Musk’s ventures have been on the dire verge of bankruptcy as his rockets continuously crashed during launch, while Tesla’s sales were low. He went from multibillionaire to near bankruptcy. Searching for a shower seemed to loom in Musk’s near future once more. He spent countless hours clawing his way back to success. However, this grueling work would lead to three nasty divorces, but Musk’s thirst for success stubbornly remained.
Musk had no concern for the massive fortune that he was risking in his pursuit for answers. He stayed committed to his work until he accomplished the task set before him. He is now a success that millions admire for his ingenuity. However, many focus on his success and thought process, yet few realize that one of the most important qualities Elon Musk possesses is, in fact, passion.

