When Elon Musk was a young guy living in Vancouver with almost no money, he walked into the employment office and asked for the best-paying job they had. It turned out to be $18 an hour to put on a hazmat suit, crawl through a narrow tunnel into a lumber mill boiler, and shovel out the hot, steaming sludge left inside. He later called it "a Dickensian steampunk nightmare," and honestly, that sounds about right. Around 30 people started that week, and by the end of it only 3 were still showing up. Elon was one of those 3. When people look at him today, they see the billionaire, but I see someone who was never too proud for the hardest, dirtiest work, and I think that says more about him than any number ever could.