Over the last several years, Elon Musk has become extremely controversial and for the most part, he doesn’t seem to care about that. For example, even though he has been a supporter of Dogecoin, Musk outraged many when he announced Tesla wouldn’t accept Bitcoin as payment which caused the cryptocurrency's value to drop. Instead of immediately backtracking as many celebrities would in that situation, Musk waited a couple of months before relenting by hinting Tesla would accept Bitcoin after all.
As a result of his controversial nature, it now often seems like anything Musk touches outrages many. For proof of that, all you have to do is look at the fact that many people were furious with SNL when it was announced that Musk would host the show. With that in mind, it is fascinating to learn that Musk almost didn’t become controversial on the world stage, to begin with. After all, as Musk has revealed, Elon put his life at risk constantly when he was a young man.
Elon Musk's Business Accomplishments Are Unparalleled
These days, it often seems like a lot of people know who Elon Musk is solely due to his sometimes outrageous interviews and his antics on social media. While it makes sense that those things get a lot of attention given that Musk can change people’s fortunes through the sheer force of his will, the fact is that Elon is an incredible business leader.
After co-founding his first notable company in 1995, Elon Musk wound up making $22 million after Zip2 was sold to Compaq. Instead of resting on his laurels, Musk would go on to control a long list of companies that would have an impact on the world. For example, after launching his own financial services company, it merged with Paypal and Musk would briefly serve as that world-famous company’s CEO. After Musk was fired from PayPal while traveling to go on vacation, Musk responded by forming two companies that made him famous.
During the early-2000s, Elon Muck formed SpaceX and Tesla. While it would take quite a while before either of those businesses took off, it is amazing that Musk founded two world-changing companies in such a short period of time. After all, Tesla has managed to compete with some of the biggest car manufacturers in the world and SpaceX’s forays into outer space have garnered headlines around the world. It also has to be noted that Musk has formed or co-founded several other businesses including The Boring Company and Neuralink.
Elon Risked It All While Working In Lumber
After Elon Musk was born and raised in South Africa, he decided to set out on his own when he was only 17-years-old likely due to his difficult childhood. While people move out of their parent’s homes at a young age all of the time, Musk went much further than most. After all, instead of maintaining the safety net of living near his parents, Musk moved from South Africa to Canada.
Even as a young man living in a Saskatchewan village named Waldeck, which had a population of fewer than 300 people, Elon Musk had a passion for making money. However, at that time Musk didn’t have the connections or credentials needed to land a big-money job that was easy. Instead, according to Ashlee Vance’s book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future”, Musk took a very dangerous job in the lumber business.
As the aforementioned book reveals, Elon Musk’s lumber career started once he learned to cut logs with a chainsaw. However, Musk felt that job wasn’t paying well enough so he went to an unemployment office in search of a better paying gig. After he was informed that he would get a tidy raise, Musk left an already dangerous job handling a chainsaw daily and took a new gig that had much more potential to end his life.
While talking to Ashlee Vance for the aforementioned book, Elon Musk talked about what his most dangerous job entailed. As Musk described, he would “put on this hazmat suit and then shimmy through this little tunnel that you can barely fit in. Then, you have to shovel, and you take the sand and goop and other residue, which is still steaming hot, and you have to shovel it through the same hole you came in through.”
While that job already sounds very intense, Musk next described how easily he could have met his untimely demise while performing that job. “There is no escape. Someone else on the other side has to shovel it into a wheelbarrow. If you stay in there for more than 30 minutes, you get too hot and die.”
With that in mind, it makes sense that according to Musk, most people who took that job quickly quit. In fact, as Musk explained to Ashlee Vance, he was one of thirty people who took that job but three days later, all but five of them had quit. Worse yet, by the end of Musk’s first week on the job, he was one of only three people who were still there.