but I think people can choose to be not
ordinary you know they think they can choose
to not necessarily conform to the conventions
that were taught to them by their parents
so yes I think I think it's possible for ordinary
people to choose to be extraordinary
Look at the person who is crying over here
and the bunch of business experts and financial
gurus who are giving that person an advice
on how to keep his company alive.
Who would have thought that one day this person
is going to become a revolutionary businessperson
and change the world’s perception about
the Space?
However, his story does not start here.
It starts with a nerdy boy, who was bullied
in school, during his childhood
A boy who built a game at the age of 12.
A boy who imagined the world beyond the earth
and the sky.
This is the story of that boy this is the
story of Elon Musk.
Hi, guys, this is Pratik and You are watching eclectic
Elon was born and brought up during the violent
days of South Africa.
White and black people clashed as did the blacks
of different tribes.
He was a firstborn of Maye and Errol.
Two individuals who grew up in the same neighborhood
and spent time with each other as loving couples
during their University days.
Elon’s mother Maye is from an amazing adventurous
family.
Elon’s grandparents were adventurous pilots
who spent years to find the lost city in the
desert.
His grandparents Joshua and Wayne Haldeman
spent most of their lives on Exploration.
Elon’s great grandfather was the first person
to fly from Africa to Australia.
my grandfather moved with with all his
kids and my mom  went to South Africa
because he wanted to use it as a base of exploration
so he had this little plane that he liked
to fly all over the place and he flowed all
through Africa and Asia and he was the first
person to fly from South Africa to Australia
and he did this in a plane with no electronic
instruments and in some places they had diesel
in some
places they had gasoline and he had to rebuild
the engine according to wherever whatever
fuel they had so it's a it's like he survived
on that that one but but he was sort of an
amateur archaeologist, he liked to explore
things just for exploration just a quest for
curiosity seems to run in the family
So, because of having such adventurous parents
Elon's mother Maye and her sibling left with the impression
that nothing is impossible.
And We can see that same hunger of exploration
in Elon musk - solving worlds problem, Building
something new something different doing what
no one else was ready to do even when everyone
called him crazy. No matter what happens
Elon Musk is always determined to follow his
dreams and goals no matter what people think
of him.
After giving birth to Elon in 1971.
Maye Musk gave birth to two more children Kimball
in 1972 and Tosca in 1974
All of our family members are entrepreneurs in some form
yeah
I guess I'd probably give credit to our
grandfather who was a he was one of the explorers
who explored the random parts of Africa for
about 20 to 30 years before actually he died
in the plane that he that he used for exploring
so he really went all the way and inspired
my mother generation and my father generation
and and now us and I
think we're just I think this is something
about taking that
entrepreneurship energy and coming to North
America where it's the land of opportunity
and you can just do incredible things and
we've just been blessed to be able to be here
and do great stuff
Elon was 5 years old in 1976 during the Soweto
uprising.
An incident, which started with the peaceful
march of black students and took a violent
turn.
Many died at the hands of police.
Elon and his brother admit witnessing some
rough stuff, themselves while growing up.
Throughout his childhood, Elon wanted to escape
the place where he lived and wanted to go
to a place where his dream can flourish.
Elon’s childhood was all about being isolated,
wandering around his own brain and his love
towards books.
In the biography of Musk by Ashlee Vance Elon's
mother, Maye stated that- ‘He goes into
his brain, and then you just see he is in
another world, He still does that.
Now I just leave him be because I know he
is designing a new rocket or something’
After all, it is a good thing, that Elon learned
a way to block out the whole world and dedicate
all of his concentration to a single task.
Elon’s father was in engineering business
and he was good at it.
Their family owned one of the biggest houses
in Pretoria.
During his childhood, Elon was always different
from other kids.
He spent more time in libraries rather than
playing with his friends.
He started reading fictional books and then
comics and then nonfiction.
Elon liked reading books like the lord of
the rings.
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, The moon
is a harsh mistress and his most favorite
the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy.
All these books are fantasy and science fiction
books with having space exploration theories
included and so did the Elon’s projects.
Building rockets, trying to send people to
Mars, building sustainable energy resources
on earth and talking of humans becoming multi-planetary species
Elon Musk took fantasy too seriously.
Ok, but the best part is at the same time
he took the scientific and logical approach
to achieve the desired outcomes of his projects.
Elon Musk is a rare combination of fantasy
logic and science.
By mixing these three, he is building and
inventing new technology which an ordinary
person could not even imagine.
Elon is a knowledgeable person just because
of his love for books.
Sometimes he spent the whole day reading books,
at the age of four Elon read all the available
books at his school library and the neighborhood
library.
According to a psychological study, Reading
fiction improves your brain connectivity and function.
During childhood because of his reading habit,
Elon’s brain started functioning way faster
than kids around him.
He started thinking rationally he detected
flaws in other people’s thinking and tried
to correct them.
Little Elon genuinely thought that people
would be happy to hear about the flaws in
their thinking.
But, People don’t really like to be corrected.
Their ego gets hurt
And for that very same reason, other kids
stopped playing with Elon and he became more
isolated.
On top of all that for some reasons the Musk
family started falling apart.
Errol and Maye filed for divorce.
After the divorce, Elon and his brother Kimball
started living with their father.
According to Elon Musk and his family, Errol
Musk is the most unpleasant man to live with.
So why did Elon choose to live with his Father?
Living with father means a grand life.
Elon’s father had plenty of books for Elon
and he was financially strong and sufficient
He could buy Computers and other luxury
stuff for Elon and his brother.
Still, Elon and his brother Kimball had a
kind of disturbed relationship with their
father,
When Ashley Vance the author of Elon’s Biography
asked Elon about his father.
Elon said- “It would certainly be accurate
to say that I did not have a good childhood.
It was not absent of good, but it was not
a happy childhood.
It was like misery my father is good at making
life miserable that’s for sure.
He can take any situation no matter how good
it is and make it bad.
He is not a happy man.
I don’t know ..fuck I don’t know how someone
becomes like that.
throughout his school days.
Elon imagined his life in Silicon Valley where
one day he would establish himself as a revolutionary
businessperson.
You Started a software designs when you were
a 10 10 years old and got success in 12 years
old yeah oh yeah I mean yeah yeah but there
you were in southern Africa so so how did
you decide to leave your hometown and realize
your dream in North America
so I mean I should say that you know when
I was a kid I didn't really have any grand
designs I mean the the reason I started programming
computers is because I like computer games
and I play lots of computer games and I learned
that if I wrote software and sold it then
I could get more money and buy
better computers so it wasn't really you know
with some grand vision or anything when i was
growing up and I've read lots of books and
they were very often set in the United States
and it seemed like a lot of new technology
was being
developed in the United States so I thought
okay I really want to work on the new technology
so when I get to Silicon Valley you know which
when I was growing up Silicon Valley seemed
like some sort of mythical place you know
like Mount
Olympus or something so let's talk about the
So when you thought about Silicon Valley you were still in South Africa
right yeah yeah so it was still your
teenager time yeah uh-huh I tried at
first to convince my parents to move to the
US but neither of them would move they were
divorced
Entrepreneurship qualities in Elon and his
brother can be traced back to their school
days.
They were not ordinary teenagers who like
talking about movies and girls.
They both had productive conversations with
each other on the diverse range of topics
including Banking, space industry and So on.
One of their Schoolmate Mr. Wood tells an
incident while remembering their school days,
One day during a class break Elon and Kimball
were chatting when wood interrupted them and
asked what are they talking about They said
whether there is a need for branch banking
in the financial industry and whether we will
move to paperless banking.
So that kind productive conversations Elon
and his brother had during their childhood
and guys do you want to know the result of
that productive talk Elon and his Brother
had during their school days, Paypal which
introduced paperless online Money transfer
service in Financial industry.
Elon in his school during a science debate
always favored solar power against fossil
fuels and the result is his electric car company
Tesla and Solar City.
Elon also faced serious bullying during his
school days
In one incident because of getting beaten
by psycho bullies he blacked out and had to
stay at home for a week.
Elon never cared about his grades he thinks
if you are not interested in a particular
subject then studying that subject is a waste
of time.
In addition, He does not give much importance
to college degrees.
There is no need even to have a college degree
at all
not even high school
I mean if somebody graduated from a great university
that maybe in India that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things but it's not
necessarily the case you know if you
look at say people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison Steve Jobs
these guys didn't graduate from college
When Elon Musk was 10 years old, he visited Sandton
City Mall in Johannesburg and there he saw
a computer for the first time.
Elon anyhow convinced his father to purchase
that computer for him.
Commodore VIC-20 that was his first computer
in the 1980s.
Commodore vic-20 unlike games it has a real
computer keyboard with a Commodore
vic-20 the whole family can learn computing at home
It used to come with 5 kilobytes of memory
and a workbook on the basic programming language.
It was supposed to take six months to go through
all the lessons mentioned in that workbook.
However, Ellon stayed up for 3 days without
any sleep and finished the entire thing.
In 1984, At the age of 12 Elon designed the
source code for a video game called blaster
which was published by a south African trade
publication.
That was the first time Elon was introduced
to the public.
These were the words of 12 years old Elon
while describing the theme of his game.
In this game, you have to destroy an alien
space freighter which is carrying hydrogen
beams and status beam machine
Look at the creativity in his writing anyone
can notice that this kid has read lots and
lots of books.
Elon himself stated in his biography by Ashlee
Vance that he wanted to write a book like
Lord of the rings.
So see Elon was all about innovation and creating
his own world.
After some years, Elon and his cousin tried
to open a video arcade without telling their
parents but couldn’t get through the legal
process as it needs someone above 18 years
of age with them and so Elon, Kimball and
his cousins had to wait some more years to
start their own businesses.
Elon Musk spent later stages of high school
at Pretoria boys high school.
His high school friend Gideon Fourie said
that honestly there were just no signs that
Elon was going to be a billionaire.
In high school, Elon paid more attention to
subjects, which he genuinely liked or felt
interested in
He studied remaining subjects just to score
passing marks.
Elon used to say, “ I would rather play
video games, read books and write software
codes than try and get an A grade if there
is no point in getting an A.
Elon Musk always believed in thinking and making
decisions for himself
At the age of 17 finally, the moment arrived
where Elon was about to leave Africa
behind and start a new journey this was the
moment Elon has been waiting for throughout
his childhood.
But before reaching to his dream destination
America Elon will have to face some unexpected
challenges in Canada.
Elon Musk likes the risks and he makes other
people change the way they look at risk as
he says
You do not grow up thinking getting a job
is the hard part.
That is just not interesting enough.
