Elon Musk is considered the new genius of the business world. If you have no idea who Elon Musk is, here's an introduction to one of the greatest wizards in business today. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayElon Musk is a South African-born entrepreneur. Very young, he decided that he would create businesses in areas that would be of greatest benefit to humanity in the future. For him, those three areas were the World Wide Web, clean energy, and space travel. He has accomplished all three and has made billions many times over in completely different industries. At the age of 26 he sold his first company Zip2 for $300 million. Then, along with a few others, including current billionaire investor Peter Theil, he co-founded PayPal, which became a smash success. After selling Paypal for $1.5 billion, when its stake was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, most people would just like to sit back and relax on the beach for the rest of their lives. But Elon Musk wasn't one of them. Taking enormous risks with his money, he invested nearly all of it in two new companies he created. One was Tesla Motors, which focused on creating innovative cars powered by clean energy, and the second was SpaceX, which began creating rockets to carry satellites into space with the long-term goal of putting humans on Mars. Although both companies nearly went bankrupt during the recession, Musk persevered and recovered. Today, both companies are worth billions of dollars. There are other billionaires in this world, but what sets Elon apart from them is that he doesn't just pursue money, but if so he could choose much safer industries. Instead, he entered industries that had incredibly high failure rates only because they would be of great benefit to humanity. Elon Musk, at the time of publishing this article is still only 46 years old and has a lot of life ahead of him! No matter how young, old, or successful one is, there is a lot we can all learn from Elon Musk. Here are ten key reasons behind the success of this genius! Work very, very hard! Elon Musk regularly puts in 80 to 100 hours at work each week. Running two giant companies is impossible without having that kind of work week. He goes on to say that working harder than others is essential because life is limited and to maximize what you can achieve in life, you must be able to achieve in a few months what others would take more than a year to achieve. This is only possible if you also put in the work involved. At the same time, it is important to remember that hard work is not enough; in fact, it's the bare minimum. Focusing your hard work in the right direction while also working smart is what brings results. It doesn't do what everyone else does If you do what everyone else does, you might enter a market where people make money, but that means you face a lot of cutthroat competition in that market just to survive. Plus, a breakthrough innovation could wipe everything out in a year. Just as automobiles swept away horse-drawn carriages. Elon Musk is focused on entering industries where there is much less competition, but being so innovative that it creates an entirely new market. When others enter the industry, he is so far ahead that he creates a virtual monopoly. He is passionate about what he does. Steve Jobs said that it is extremely important to follow your passion because if you don't, things usually become so difficult that any rational personhe would give up. The only thing that sustains you over time is the passion for what you do. Elon Musk is no different, the fact is he went into industries that didn't make money and almost went bankrupt while trying to make them profitable. If he didn't care so deeply about doing things that benefited humanity or went into industries he didn't care about at all, he would have been inclined to give up much sooner. His passion fueled his commitment to move forward despite obstacles. He is not afraid to take risks. Elon Musk invested much of the money he earned from selling Zip2 and PayPal into his two new companies that were almost certainly doomed to fail. Both, in fact, almost did during the 2008 recession, when they were nearly bankrupt. He then poured out nearly all of his personal savings worth several million dollars just to businesses afloat during the tumultuous period and had to borrow from friends just to cover his living expenses. What kind of billionaire needs to do that? Not many for sure. At the same time, Musk recommends taking bigger risks when you're younger when you don't have a family to feed. Once you have a family to support, it is still important to take risks, but the risks must be calculated. Actively asks for criticism. Most of us want to be praised, which is why there is such a large market for flatterers. However, it is only criticism that helps us improve, especially those based on valid facts. The only way to improve is to identify the flaws in ourselves or what we create and then work hard to improve them. The only problem is that most of us don't want to hear our flaws and most people won't tell you your flaws, so you become stagnant and stop improving. If you are criticized by someone and made fun of, that person will lie next time. Elon always asked his friends everything bad they had to say about his cars rather than be happy for them to tell him how great they were. It also listened to customers, which is why it continued to improve its product at a faster pace than its other competitors. He is an eternal student. I was recently watching videos of a man named Tai Lopez, a popular YouTuber in the self-help genre. He attributes his knowledge to reading a book every day. Tai Lopez recently met Elon Musk who had heard about him. Even though Tai wanted to ask Elon many things, Elon ended up asking Tai Lopez all the tricks he could use to make his brand more popular on Snapchat. Tai Lopez realized that he ended up teaching Elon a lot more than he shared with him! No wonder it is so successful. True masters are constantly learning and are humble enough to ask for advice even from people who aren't as successful as them! It creates products that are far superior to anything else on the market. To enter a new industry where there are several established players or to create a new industry all together, you can't just invent something that's good. You need to find a product or service that is far superior to anything else. Otherwise, people will just stick to existing brands they feel comfortable with. If there is nothing worth talking about, no new industry will be created. You have to create something that's so awesome that you don't even need advertising to promote it. Existing customers sell it for you. This is what Apple's core components did for Macs and iPhones, and this is what early customers of Tesla, Musk's company, did for the latest versions of!