In this motivational monologue, Evan Carmichael outlines the pivotal decisions that shaped Elon Musk’s rise from a self‑taught 12‑year‑old programmer in South Africa to a billionaire entrepreneur. He chronicles Musk’s early choice to learn coding and sell a simple game, his strategic move to Canada to gain U.S. entry, his drop‑out from Stanford to launch Zip2, the creation and sale of PayPal, and the founding of Tesla and SpaceX with the ultimate goal of making life multi‑planetary. Carmichael uses these milestones to argue that decisive, unwavering commitment—ignoring doubt and external criticism—is the core driver of extraordinary success. He urges viewers to adopt the same “no‑alternative” mindset for their own businesses and dreams, concluding with a call to subscribe and join his newsletter for more inspirational stories.
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Today he advises presidents, he's part of the inspiration behind Iron Man, and he's worth billions of dollars. But Elon Musk's dream started when he made a really important decision as a 12-year-old boy in South Africa. It was 1983, and the 12-year-old Elon Musk decided that he wanted to be a computer programmer. The only problem was, in 1983, there weren't any classes for 12-year-olds who wanted to learn how to code. He didn't let that hold him back because he made that decision, and so he taught himself. And he quickly had a computer game called Blastar, which was a space fighting game that he wrote and eventually sold for $500. Mission accomplished. Elon Musk then made another really important decision. He decided that he wanted to be an entrepreneur in America. The problem was he was in South Africa and it was hard to get the visa to go from South Africa to United States. His mom was Canadian, so he went to Canada and at age 17 became a Canadian citizen. He went to college in Canada. He quickly transferred to the US as soon as he could. Again, his goal, what he decided was he was going to be an entrepreneur in America. He ended up at Stanford, but since his goal wasn't to become a student, he dropped out to start his first company. His first company was called Zip2 that he started with his brother, and it was an online city guide for the publishing industry. He signed up the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and he eventually built it up and sold it. In the deal, he ended up getting $22 million. His goal, what he decided, was to become an American entrepreneur. Another mission accomplished. Now he wanted to do something bigger, right? He's 28 years old, he's got $22 million. He didn't just want to sit on that. He decided he wanted to do something bigger and more important. So he started X.com. It was a financial services company that eventually merged and became PayPal, with Elon Musk being the single largest shareholder in PayPal. eBay then bought them out for $1.5 billion, making Elon Musk get $165 million from that deal. Next mission accomplished. Now he wanted to do something bigger. His decision was, I'm not just going to sit on this. I want to do something bigger. I want to do something that's going to change the world. So he launched Tesla to make electric cars, and he launched SpaceX to go and explore space. And it's not just about putting a man in space. He wants life to be multi-planetary. That's his decision. He decided that life should be multi-planetary, and he's not going to stop. Until that happens. He wants people living on other planets. See, the key thing along Elon Musk's entire life is that he decided when he wanted something. He decided and he made it happen, and he didn't listen to the voices inside his head or everybody telling him that he was crazy. He didn't listen to the people who would say that you don't have the resources, you don't have the technology, you don't have the capabilities, you don't have the connections. He decided that this was going to happen and he would not accept any other alternative. You need to do the same with your business and your goals. We all have dreams, we all have aspirations, we all have ambitions, we all have goals that we want to accomplish. And yet, how often do you go out and accomplish those big dreams? The reason you're not where you want to be is because you haven't truly decided. It's because you've created an environment that holds you where you are. Because you listen to the little man. You listen to the people in your life who tell you why you can't do it. You listen to that voice in your head that tells you that you're not good enough, that you could never go out and do this. And you may have moments of bravery that make you want to step out and make you start to believe in yourself, and then bam, life smacks you back down. Until you truly decide and accept no other alternative then you won't really achieve your big dreams and your goals. But if you do, if you decide who you're going to be, who you're going to be surrounded by, where you're going to be, what your business is going to look like, if you truly decide and you really feel that and you accept no other alternative, then you can make your dreams become a reality. And who knows, it might make you a billionaire too. Believe. If you guys like this video, you want to see more, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you soon. Every week I share inspiring and motivational stories that really mean something to me that I hope you'll check out in my newsletter below.
