Elon Musk Might Not Be the Richest Man Alive If He Had Listened To His Mom—'I Told Him Not To Do An Electric Car As Well As Rockets'

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is the richest antheral successful the satellite with a nett worthy of implicit $700 billion. He's a household name—synonymous with electrical cars, Mars missions, and ignoring everyone who tells him no.

That includes his ain mother.

In an 2022 interrogation with The Times of London, 77-year-old Maye Musk admitted she erstwhile advised her lad against the precise moves that made him a planetary icon. "I told him not to bash an electrical car arsenic good arsenic rockets and helium didn't perceive to me," she said. "He should bash immoderate helium wants."

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Fortunately for Elon, proposal has ne'er been a dealbreaker. Not erstwhile it came from investors, engineers—or his mom. In a 2022 station connected Twitter, Musk shared that successful 2009, then- Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chair Charlie Munger laid retired "all the ways Tesla would fail" during a meal meeting. Musk said helium agreed with the list—but built it anyway.

Maye Musk didn't micromanage. In a 2019 effort for CNBC, she explained her parenting approach: she taught her children to enactment hard, fto them travel their interests, and kept her chemoreceptor retired unless asked. "I didn't dainty them similar babies oregon scold them," she wrote. "I ne'er told them what to study. I didn't cheque their homework."

She didn't program connected raising a billionaire. She planned connected raising autarkic adults. That's precisely what she got.

"When they wanted my advice, I gave it," she told The Times. "I americium precise abbreviated with my ain answers." And if they didn't instrumentality it? That was good too.

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The results talk for themselves. Elon launched Tesla and SpaceX. His member Kimbal built a food-and-agriculture business. His sister Tosca runs her ain movie workplace and streaming platform. And Maye? She built a vocation of her own, modeling into her 70s portion becoming thing of a fable successful her ain right—complete with a signature hashtag: #proudmom.

Even erstwhile it comes to Mars, she has her limits. "You person to person six months of mentation and isolation and that conscionable doesn't entreaty to me," she said. But past she added, "If my kids privation maine to bash it, I volition bash it." It's hard to accidental nary to Elon Musk—even if you're his mother.

He didn't perceive erstwhile she told him to prime betwixt cars and rockets. He didn't pivot aft a legendary capitalist rattled disconnected each crushed he'd clang and burn. He made his ain decisions—and built an empire doing it.