Elon Musk got rejected by Netscape. He walked into the lobby, was too shy to talk to anyone, and walked out. Never got the job. At his first company Zip2, the board demoted him. Twice. They refused to let him be CEO. He got fired from PayPal as CEO while flying to his own honeymoon. The board voted him out mid air. He almost died of malaria in 2000. Ten days in intensive care. Lost 45 pounds. A day from death. His first child died at 10 weeks old. His first rocket exploded. Falcon 1, flight one. Burned on the pad. His second rocket exploded. His third rocket exploded. The last of his money was nearly gone. Tesla nearly went bankrupt in 2008. The closest he ever came to a nervous breakdown. Both companies almost died on the same Christmas Eve. He was sued by investors. Mocked by the people who built cars before him. His childhood heroes, the astronauts who inspired him, testified against his company to Congress. The Cybertruck window shattered on live stage in front of the world. He overpaid for Twitter by his own admission and watched its value collapse. He was beaten unconscious as a child and thrown down a flight of stairs. He has said he goes to sleep alone and it kills him. He failed in public, over and over, for thirty years. He is the richest man in the history of the world. The difference was never the absence of failure. It was the refusal to stop after it.