Here’s one of the most common questions I get asked:
“What is Maverick?”
According to Dictionary.com, a maverick is a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. Therefore, a Maverick is a nonconformist, an individualist; a free thinker and a loner.
If by any chance you are rebellious in nature or like to disrupt conventional policies or ideas, chances are that you are a Maverick!
So when we Add “Think” to the word Maverick to make up Think Maverick, we literally want every individual here at thinkmaverick.com to Think Like A Maverick!
Why Think Like A Maverick?
The World’s Best Entrepreneurs, Artists, Actors, Actresses and Athletes are Maverick Thinkers…. Just think about it!
- Steve Jobs wouldn’t have made a comeback after being kicked out of his own very own company…
- Bill Gates, Will Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee, Anthony Robbins…. Just To name a few.
I won’t go into details here as I’ve dedicated a special article on “So what is a Maverick?”
Among all the successful Maverick Thinkers, Elon Musk intrigued me the most. That’s the MAIN reason why we choose Elon Musk – the world’s most maverick billionaire as our ThinkMaverick Magazine Logo on Itunes!
I truly believe Elon Musk is a Game Changer for your business and dreams.
If you believe he is, the price of admission to get to the top of your game is just a few minutes of your time.
Follow my series as we unravel the secrets to his universe.
Day 1: How to Stay Motivated Like Elon Musk
Day 2: How to Learn Like Elon Musk: 4 Tips to learn faster and better than everyone else
Day 3: Elon Musk Leadership Model: 5 Tips to Manage an Effective Team for Your Business
Day 4: Elon Musk’s Advice for Starting a Business
Day 5: How Elon Musk Overcomes Challenges
Day 6: How to Work as Hard as Elon Musk in a World of Lazy Dreamers
Day 7: How Elon Musk Work 100 hours a Week
Day 8: 9 things I learned from Elon Musk
1. Have Many Plan B’s:
Having fear of failure is one thing and preparing to avoid it is a totally different segment altogether. An ideology of a good company not only lies in how it is run but how ready it is in facing eventualities.
Business growth is always floating. There are enough number of circumstances and conditions that can hamper the growth of a business.
What matters is how much is one prepared for it!
Elon deals with this unpredictability factor by investing himself in various Plan B’s (as he likes to call it).
Having faced uncertainties in many phases of his life, Elon decided from the start that his organizations would have many backup plans and continuity of business scenarios. By this way, he ensures that in the event of any eventuality his company is always prepared to take it head-on.
In any venture of his, you can see that the company is better covered against any drawbacks. These can be anything- starting from natural calamities to political unrest to competitions etc.
Back-up plans are in a way the fall-back plans for an organization to survive. It is always in the best interest of the company to make such plans while the designs are even in the drawing room stages.
2. Venture Into New Arenas:
As an entrepreneur, you would often be finding yourself in situations that you have never bargained for. Sometimes no amount of back up plans or arrangements could prepare you for such circumstances.
These are the crucial times that you might face, which eventually tell out how successful your organization is going to be. No, and these are not your everyday situations and trust us- you will face them at some time.
Elon tells us that the only way to prepare for such circumstances is to train your brain by actively participating in made up situations of your own. These are the situations, which you create yourself by venturing out of your comfort zone.
American Internet entrepreneur Noah Kagan once suggested him an experiment on the same lines. He wanted Elon to bargain for a discount of 10% once he had made the coffee order.
Elon was at first nervous as he could have easily done without the bargain. Nevertheless, he took it as a challenge and got the bargain he wanted.
Here the suggestion is to use our time wisely like these and to make ourselves ready for such unconventional circumstances. Step out of your comfort zone more and venture into new arenas and scenarios which you have never encountered.
The training and the quick wit you give your mind now could one day save your organization.
3. Don’t Stress Out:
Competent people never stress out due to a problem. They discover it quickly, create a solution and work towards the solution.
It becomes a habit for them to maintain their calm and composure even during stressful periods. Do not let it show.
Elon is the founder to many of his companies and has an active part to play in many of his ventures. Needless to say, the stress factor is on the high always!
However, Musk has learned to keep his cool and demure even at his worst possible situations. This comes only out of habit and never without practice.
He believes that a stressed out environment seldom achieves anything.
Stress is something that is contagious. When the founder stresses out, he invariably passes it out to his colleagues and the end result would be messy.
Learn to control your stress and pressure. Plan the solutions fruitfully to avoid them. More importantly, never let it out on others as it could have a cascading effect on your entire team and its morale.
4. Be A Part Of Something:
Often you might have come across people who blatantly state that they have missed the bus and it is too late to start for them.
Many people assume that only the youngest of the lot is made for entrepreneurship and age plays a deciding factor in it. The statement is only partially correct.
When age is on your side, you can afford to take greater risks. But no matter what your age is, it never diminishes the value you bring to an organization.
Musk believes that either people can believe that it is too late for them or they can start to believe that it is never late for them. The choice is left to the people.
Elon explains this beautifully in a quote that the things which people want the most are always waiting for them by the shore with open arms. All people need to do is to swim up to the shore.
It is never too late to be part of something new. You can either sit back and watch others take decisions or you can be a part of it.
5. Entrepreneurship Is An Abyss:
To all those who think that the grass is always greener on the other side, Elon has one simple answer- Entrepreneurship is an abyss.
He has come across many people who hate the cubicle job and want to be their own bosses. For all such candidates, Elon’s simple advice is this. – Entrepreneurship can be unforgiving!
In his own words, entrepreneurship is like having a handful of glass in the mouth and staring at your own death in a deep abyss. Entrepreneurship and business of the current age can be that tricky for a common man.
You have to be extremely competent and have nerves of steel to venture into this world. Any misstep can not only backfire but can also take you to a point of no return.
You have to deal with irate customers, your investors, your employees, and your peers. They become your bosses in such cases and failure in a business is never any fun.
You have to face it, sell everything, exit, regroup and start once again. These can be achieved only by someone who eats and breaths business and not for someone who just wants to start a company as he feels passionate about it.
Choose extreme precaution in the world of business.
6. Embrace Your Worst Case Scenario:
On an entrepreneurial journey, only either of one is bound to happen – Either you hit sky high or you hit rock bottom. Everyone prepares for hitting the roof and make plans for it that they seldom make plans for the eventuality of hitting rock bottom.
The fear of failure is something that not everyone is good at coping with. In many cases, this worst-case scenario prevents a person from going the extra mile to achieve his goals.
Sometimes an entrepreneur would think that the risk is too bad and this stops him from completely taking that risk.
Well, Musk has a different solution in hand for this. Having tasted bankruptcy, Musk started to embrace such worst-case scenarios early in his entrepreneurial days.
He started experimenting himself to live on $1 per day and to see if he could survive. Eventually, he found out that he can.
Elon often states this nature of him to embrace that worst cases scenario often made him take the risks which he wanted to do. In the end, Elon believed that even if the ventures were a failure he would survive.
Start taking such precautions when you start your company. Detail up your worst-case scenarios and try to emulate it. This gives you more confidence in what you pursue.
Over to You!
Do you have any tips and strategies that I didn’t mention in this post?
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This is day 5 of 8 Days of Maverick Success Tips from Elon Musk.
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