This will be one of many articles where we will be talking about different personalities who inspired change and have or had power and influence, either during their lifetime or after they passed away. Some are still alive, and some are no longer among the living.
Keep in mind that, while we will try to include as many personalities as possible, we may still miss some, or we will add them later. Make sure you stay connected and subscribe to our newsletter, so you don’t miss any of our inspiring and enlightening articles.
We will not follow any chronological order here. Meaning, we will just be listing personalities randomly without following a specific criterion. We may talk about someone still alive today and tomorrow we may talk about someone who lived hundreds of years ago. Regardless of the time in history these personalities lived on, the focus will be mainly on the positive encouragement and lessons we can take from their individual journeys.
We will start with a personality who is, without any doubts, one of the most influential of our present time. Yes, you got it right, his name is Elon Musk. The man who bought Twitter and is making headlines all over the world.
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. From early age he started showing his talent for computers and entrepreneurship. When he was about 12 years old, he created a computer game and sold it to a computer magazine.
He spent his childhood and teen ages in South Africa and lived with his parents there until he moved to Canada when he was about 17-18 years old.
From Canada, he moved to United States to study physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford University in California, but he left only a few days after because he understood that the Internet, which was a young technology at that time, had much more potential to change society than working a regular job or getting a diploma from universities. So, here we see that one of his qualities is Vision. He saw potential where other people couldn’t see.
He then went ahead and founded (along with his brother) Zip2, a company that created online city guides for newspapers. They sold the company 4 years later for roughly $300,000,000 (three hundred million dollars). Elon Musk made about $22 million from the sale. Now that’s a lot of money mainly for someone so young. He was only 27 years old at that time.
So, another quality of Elon we can imitate is Taking Action. He not only had a vision, but he worked relentlessly to make that vision a reality. Many people say they have a vision and great ideas but only a few take action. Not many are willing to sacrifice and work hard on their dreams. It’s easier to focus on the money he made than to realize the effort and sacrifice he made to grow the company into something worth $300 million.
But he didn’t stop there. After selling Zip2 he went ahead and founded another company called X.com which later became the well-known online payment service PayPal. They sold PayPal to eBay a few years later for a staggering $1.5 billion. Elon made more than $100 million from the deal. Wow! And he was only 31 years old at that time. What an accomplishment. Isn’t that inspiring? How would you like to accomplish something like this? Guess what, you can! We all have the power within us. We just have to be willing to work hard enough to make our dreams come true.
Elon was already a multi-millionaire, and you would think he would just take a break, buy a nice beach house in the Caribbean, and retire. Nope, he went ahead and founded 4 more companies, namely, Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, and Boring. Tesla produces electric vehicles, SpaceX produces space rockets, SolarCity produces solar panels, Boring produces high speed tunnels for faster transportation. And recently, he bought Twitter.
Another characteristic you can see here is that Elon Musk, like other entrepreneurs, is always trying to solve specific problems. And he became a billionaire while trying to solve these problems. That’s a great lesson we can learn from. The greatest entrepreneurs are always trying to solve problems and do things that impact millions of people. Maybe you have an idea that will solve specific problem in your community, city, state, county or even worldwide? Why not take action and start executing the idea?
Elon Musk is very focused on colonizing Mars because he believes it’s crucial for humanity survival. He wants humanity to have an alternative place to live in case something happens to our planet earth. He probably won’t be alive by the time this happens but he’s still doing it. He has a vision, and he executes. The problem with many people wanting to be entrepreneurs is that they have many great ideas, but no motivation to execute.
This brings us to another crucial issue which is Purpose. Without a purpose, life becomes meaningless. Without purpose, you will be at the mercy of circumstances and living in autopilot. Purpose is what drives the greatest spirits on earth. Life presents lots of challenges and some are really hard. If you don’t have a purpose, there will be no motivation to push yourself to overcome those challenges. When you have a vision and purpose, they fuel you to keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances.
Do you think Elon’s life is only bed and roses? Not at all. If you watch his interviews, you will see that he went through a lot of pain in his personal and business life. But at the same time, he used the pain as fuel to become better and out-execute other entrepreneurs.
Sometimes we use all kind of excuses to justify our failures and keep ourselves confined to our comfort zone. Just a bit of pain is enough to stop many people from moving forward. Let’s get inspiration from great achievers such as Elon Musk and do what must be done to push ourselves to the next level. We have to multiply our God-given talents. Let’s not settle for less.
We trust you were inspired by this article. There is much more where this came from so make sure you keep exploring our website for more tips on how to hack prosperity and transcend yourself to the next level. You can also subscribe to our newsletter so we can notify you when new articles are published. And please take a moment to share this article on your social media or with friends and families. Give and you will receive.
