Does Elon Musk Deserve To Be The World's First Trillionaire?

0:00No child deserves to go hungry, especially at school. But right now, some politicians are cutting funding to programs that help kids access free meals at school while handing out tax breaks to billionaires. Hungry kids can't focus and learn. The National Education Association is made up of 3 million educators and allies across the country dedicated to making sure every child has the support they need to thrive in the classroom. Help the NEA keep hungry kids fed at school. Learn more at nea.org slash nutrition. When you're at work, you never know when you'll be interrupted. But with the Dell Pro, powered by Intel Core Ultra with vPro, no matter what distracts you, your laptop won't.

0:42It's battery-optimized for the way you work, with built-in intelligence that quiets distractions when you need to focus. Your laptop will help keep you locked in, even when it's bringing your dog to work day. Built for those who stay in the flow. The Dell Pro. Built for you. Dell.com slash Dell dash pro.

1:05Does Elon Musk deserve to be the world's first trillionaire? Well, the answer is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. And it's not just because the answer is yes, but for the reasons why it's yes. And look, I want to be upfront about something right from the start. Elon Musk has said and done many things I do not agree with. I mean, strongly disagree. I'm not here to defend the man. I'm not here to talk about his place in politics or some of the really harmful decisions he's made over the years. I'm here to talk about a marketplace principle that doesn't care about your opinion of Elon Musk.

1:40And that principle is the marketplace compensates you in direct proportion to the value provided. it. That's a really fancy way to say that the more valuable stuff you put into the world, the more money you make. And it turns out Elon Musk is very good at doing this at scale. And not just for himself, but over 4 ,000 hourly wage workers at his companies have become millionaires overnight because of the IPO of SpaceX. And when I say value, I'm not just talking about electric cars or self-landing rockets. We're going to go beyond that in Today's episode. We're talking about building something extraordinary, something that you can build that can help build your own wealth.

2:20Today, I'm going to show you the exact step-by-step methods, how that happened for Elon and how it can happen for you at your own scale. You don't have to be a trillionaire, but you can build your own wealth by adding more value to the marketplace so you understand the principles so that you can do it yourself. And before we get into each step, let's just put Elon aside and learn from what he's done to build his trillion dollar empire. Let's go.

2:51Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow, and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Step one is understanding what he actually built.

3:27Now, recently in June, 2026, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in human history. It sounds incredible because it is incredible. His net worth crossed a trillion dollars when SpaceX, his company, went public on the NASDAQ. And it was the largest IPO in history. IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. This is when a company first allows the public to buy stocks in a company publicly on the stock market. Now, I kind of just glossed over that, but let's just think about that for a moment. Let that sink in. The largest IPO in history, okay? That means he is adding more value than any other company has ever done on the stock market.

4:07Now, to understand that, we got to peel back a few layers. And we want to understand how Elon actually achieved this, not the actual stock price and how it became so valuable, but the actual problems he solved. Now, with SpaceX specifically, he is landing rockets back onto Earth, which is crazy when you think that before SpaceX, when you would send a rocket into space, whether you want to put in some satellites in orbit or whatever it might be, the rocket would come back and just explode into the ocean. Okay, basically$100 million wasted. Well, it's not wasted completely. They just thought that's what was the price of sending a rocket into space.

4:46By being able to land a rocket, you can reuse a rocket over and over again. As you can see, this is incredibly valuable. This is a big problem that got solved. Now, this is not the first time this happened. Elon Musk started, of course, Tesla, where he started the whole movement of electric cars and changed the industry and became the most valuable car brand ever. And even before that, he was one of the people that was the founders of PayPal, right? One of the PayPal mafia. And so he revolutionized a lot of the financial industry through allowing people to be able to send money via email. He did it again with Starlink, which he put the internet connectivity in the world via satellites, allowing people to have internet in war zones, in disaster areas, in communities that are not able to be connected through fiber optics.

5:34So he's solving a lot of big problems. I can keep going. Neuralink is working to give people who cannot speak or be able to move to communicate with their thoughts. This is incredible stuff. There's no doubt, regardless of how much I hate the things that Elon has done outside of his businesses, that he's made an incredible impact and solved some really big problems. So when people go to buy his stock or go to back his businesses, he has a track record of solving a lot of big problems. People bet on Elon for delivering an ROI on their money. And like I said, you can disagree with the methods. You can question how he manages other people.

6:13You can even object to all his political involvement and all the mess he's created in the world. But you cannot overlook the problems that he's solving through his businesses and the values adding to the marketplace. Now, it's easy for us to just dismiss him as some crazy person, some, you know, egomaniac narcissist, which there's probably a lot of truth in that, and kind of not learn the lessons that are right in front of us. Some things that we can extract and apply to our own businesses. And that's why step one is understanding that, yes, this guy does provide value to the marketplace. And therefore, he must be compensated for that.

6:53You know, is he adding the most value out of all the people in the world? Maybe. And that's why he's the first trillionaire. OK, regardless of if there should be trillionaires or not, all that kind of stuff. Let's put that aside for a second. We want to understand how he adds value so that we could do the same at our own scale. All right. That's step one. Let's move on to step two. understanding who wins when he wins. And this is the part of the Elon Musk conversation that gets skipped over a lot. When SpaceX IPO'd, he made himself a trillionaire, but he was not the only one who won. More than 4 ,000 current and former SpaceX employees became millionaires in that single event.

7:32We're not just talking about executives or high-end engineers. We're talking welders, machinists, factory floor workers, people earning an hourly wage where they were given equity as a part of their compensation package. And when that company IPO'd, they were automatically becoming millionaires because of the value of the stock that they held. For example, one former welder who joined SpaceX in 2015 was earning$28 an hour. He walked away from the IPO with nearly a million dollars in stock. That is wealth creation at scale that almost no one's ever really seen. A lot of people don't understand that when people build an incredible business, we can hate on all these billionaires, but when they build these incredible businesses, they also help a lot of people that are involved in the business, whether their own team members, their employees, or even the people that they work with, other vendors, they're stimulating the economy at a scale that most of us have a hard time comprehending.

8:27People that bought Tesla stock back in the day when it first IPO'd, they became very, very wealthy because of the growth of Tesla. So obviously there's people making money off his success as well. It's not just him. Okay. So a lot of people think that, oh, this guy's a trillionaire. He's greedy. And that could be true. But the point is, is that when he's growing his business, other people are growing their wealth as well. And you can either just say, not like this system and say, this is not fair, or you could capitalize it. You can own some stock of companies that Elon runs, okay? And you can benefit from his success.

9:02And this is something of a bigger conversation, the idea of capitalism and the way the world works in markets. But if you're going to be in this game, this world that we live in, you might as well utilize the tools that you have so that you can also benefit from other growth of other companies that you're not even involved in. Companies that you're not even building. But this is where you got to start thinking a little bit long term. How could I build a company that does the same thing? And that's what we want to do in step three. Self-directed investing, trading, full service wealth management, automated investing, financial planning, thematic investing, retirement planning.

9:39Phew. And to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage, or experience, Schwab has everything you need all in one place. So you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. You spent money to get that customer's call. Ads, referrals, word of mouth, doesn't matter. The moment it rings out unanswered, that's not just a missed opportunity. That's a sunk cost walking out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo. spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call.

10:17With Quo, all your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. Set up in minutes on any device, keep your existing number, and add teammates as you grow. No IT, no hassle. And Quo's built-in AI agent handles after-hours calls, answers questions, and even books appointments so you never miss a lead, even when your team is offline. One of the reasons I attribute any success I've had in business is great customer support and service. And Quo makes that easy. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo.

10:55Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash MBA. That's Quo.com slash MBA. Step three is to apply the marketplace principle honestly with your own business. Here is the uncomfortable truth at the center of this whole episode. The marketplace does not pay you for your likability. It does not pay you for if you're a good person or a bad person. I know that sounds really bad, but that's just the truth of the world. It does not pay you to have the right opinions or to be morally sound. You want to be a moral person just to be a good person and to enjoy your life and to have the benefits of being a good person.

11:42But we're just talking about the marketplace now, how you get paid. At the end of the day, the market pays you for solving problems. Specifically, it pays you in proportion to how many people have that problem that you are solving. So if you're solving a big problem for many people, then you are going to be compensated very handsomely. But if you're solving a problem that's not that big of a deal, it's nice to have. For few people, you'll be compensated accordingly. You're not going to get compensated that much. Elon has solved problems that have affected millions of people, even billions, when you look at the scale of the companies that he's built.

12:18And therefore, that's why he is worth a trillion dollars. Now, of course, this fluctuates. Sometimes he's in the billion mark. Sometimes he goes past the trillion mark because we're talking about his net worth. But the point I'm making is that problems are your best friend as an entrepreneur, because if you could solve real hard problems, you'll be compensated handsomely. And if you look at problems in a scale or a spectrum, I would say, Elon's on the end of the spectrum where he's solving problems that people thought were impossible to solve. Right. Governments have tried to solve the problem of wasting rockets every time it went out into space.

12:55right? He solved a problem they thought would never happen. Catching a rocket with like two chopsticks and getting it to land back to where it was. That sounds like science fiction, but he solved that problem. He solved the problem of electric cars not having enough range over time. The battery technology improved and he was able to make electric cars mainstream and not just a novelty item. Now, I'm saying this because you don't need to be on this side of the spectrum. You could solve big problems for specific people, but you don't need to be solving at the size of Elon and still do well. But the reason why I want to do this episode is because you need to answer a very important question in your business.

13:35How big is the problem that you are solving? Ask yourself this question honestly. Is it a must have? Is it a real problem that people are suffering with? And if the answer is yes, how many people? Are we talking about a dozen people? Are we talking about thousands? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands of people? Because the answers to those questions is going to really determine your value in the marketplace. It's going to determine how easy it will be to sell your thing. Because when you're solving a major problem, it's easy to sell this product. And I always talk about this. When you're building a business, you want to make sure your product or service is like rolling a boulder down the hill, not uphill.

14:14It should be easy. Once people understand what you do, they're like, oh, yeah, I want that right now. How much is it? Where do I pay? Okay. If they have follow-up questions and they're not really sure if they need it, they're asked clarifying questions, you're probably not building a product that solves a real problem or you're actually fulfilling a real need. And I really discovered this myself when I sold Webinar Ninja, our software company, our software product, where we made it very easy for the owner of the business to run a webinar with all the marketing tools. once somebody experienced Webinar Ninja on a webinar where I sold it, they were like, oh, this is amazing.

14:51I want to buy this. This makes total sense. I could see how I can make more money and more sales through webinars with this product. It was a no-brainer. And therefore, it was easy to sell. I've sold many products in my entrepreneurial career where it was very hard to sell because it was quite complicated and it really didn't scratch a real itch or really solve a really major problem. So the bigger the problem or the more painful the problem and the easier it is for you to sell the solution. It's just that simple. And you can see that in your own life. And the crazy thing is that your solution doesn't need to be perfect.

15:21It just needs to be a little bit better than the competition. It needs to solve the problem in a better way than what's out there. And if you could do that on a consistent basis, you're gonna win in business. Hey, if this episode is making you think a little bit differently, I want you to subscribe to the show because we have an upcoming episode I do not want you to miss. It's all about how to motivate yourself to get things done. This is an episode I've been working on for weeks. And the reason why I wanted to publish this episode is because a lot of people feel like they need motivation. They need a way to kind of get started and how to get up every day and get what they need to get done done.

15:58I'm going to tell you that you don't need motivation, actually. You actually need a system. And I want to gift you that system in that episode. So hit subscribe so you don't miss that upcoming episode. All right. Step number four is the lesson for your business. Because if you haven't noticed yet, this episode is not really about Elon Musk. It's about how you can add more value so that you can be compensated more for what you provide. A lot of people feel like, oh, I got to increase my prices. I don't know how to increase my prices without getting my customers all upset. Well, it's very simple.

16:27Just add more value, provide more value, and therefore the price will be justified. And a good example of this is if you ever flew anywhere on any airline, you have options, right? You can fly economy, you can fly premium economy, you can fly business, you can fly first, right? We're all going to the same place. We're all getting to the same destination. But the more value the airline provides, whether it's a bigger seat or better service or better food, the more they could charge. And therefore, they're making more money. In fact, if you look at the economics of airlines, most of their money is made on business and in first class and now a premium economy as well.

17:02And they don't really make money on economy because it just covers the cost of getting to the destination, fuel charges, taxes, all that kind of stuff. So with that example in mind, in your own business, Where can you add more value? Where can you solve more problems for your customers? You might be just solving the basics right now. Like you're getting them to their destination. You have the economy class set. But maybe you have a way to provide more value in a way that makes experience easier, gets them to the result faster, maybe more support. Maybe you want to give them more tools to make it easier for them to implement what you provide to your customer.

17:38You know, when we were running our software company Webinar Ninja, I learned this from Patrick Campbell, who is like the master at pricing. He built this company called ProfitWell, sold his company for over$250 million because he was the master when understanding how do I extract as much value from my customers, meaning I can extract as much compensation so that way I can provide more value to them. So I want to make sure that you understand what we understood in Webinar Ninja so that you could apply the same principles. So, for example, with us, we understood that people want to run webinars, live webinars.

18:12That's just the basics. That's kind of like table stakes. Everybody wants to run a live webinar. But some people want to automate their webinars as well. Some people have very large webinars where they have 500 and 1 ,000 people. So we made sure we offered the basics, which allows you to start with a starter plan where you can run a live webinar, a small live webinar for the 100 people on the live webinar. But, hey, if you want more value, you're going to pay more. And that's how we were able to extract more dollars. So as our customers grew in their audience, larger audiences, larger webinars, as our business grew, we made more money because they started to grow their webinars.

18:46They move up into plan because now they need more attendees. They need different types of webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, all kinds of webinars. So you need to allow a way for your customers to graduate and move up in the classes. Go from economy to premium to business to first. And by the way, this is not some sort of revolutionary idea, okay? This is called a value ladder. It's existed since the beginning of time. If you ever have seen a bestselling author, they'll sell you a book, and that book is like$10,$15. You pick it up at the airport. You might be wondering, how much money are they making on the book, right?

19:19How are these authors living, and how are they able to sustain their careers? Well, they're not just making money off the book, because the royalties they make off the book are very little, like a dollar, right? And even if they sell a million copies, which is very, very hard, that million dollars is not going to sustain them for the rest of their life, right? So they have other offers. They do consulting. They speak on stages. They might have a coaching program. They might have a course, whatever it might be. The point is that that's just the entry level. That's the economy class where you start on the journey.

19:47So that's the first takeaway, adding more value so that you can earn more money. But you also can add value by just being better than other people. Your solution has to be better than the existing solutions out there. and not just different for the sake of being different. You want to be world-class, the choice, where people feel like, hey, I will pay a little bit more to get the best product out there. So again, you can add more value to your customers by solving more problems, but you can also add more value by solving them better, having a better solution, having a better product or service.

20:20And by the way, you could do both. So it's not just about the problem you're solving, but how well you are solving it. Now, if you haven't started your business yet, or maybe you're stuck in a current business, you need to reevaluate what you're offering because sometimes you're just not solving a problem that's big enough, right? Sometimes you're just not a must-have. And I'm telling you, like I said before, it's much easier to sell a product or service when it is a must-have, when it's a medicine and not a vitamin, right? It's much easier to sell a cure to a problem or a cure to a disease or a cure to an illness than a preventative manager, like selling somebody vitamin C.

20:56A lot of people don't understand this kind of parallel, but the point I'm trying to make here is that when something's urgent and people are in pain, they're willing to pay for a solution. So one of the reasons why we talk about talking to your customers so much, so if you have a current business, reach out to your customers, whether it's via email or on a Zoom call or whatever it might be, and learn a little bit more about what they do, how they run their life, how they are currently trying to solve the problems that they have. The more you learn, the more you will find out how you can solve bigger problems for them, problems that you may not be aware of.

21:30And this is something that is kind of like a hidden hack because most people will not do this. They will not take the time to talk to the customers. But I found that this is one of the most best use of time as a founder is to learn a little bit more about your customer's pains, issues, so that you could solve bigger and better problems for them. Step five, stop asking the wrong question. Here is the most important thing I wanted to leave you with in this episode, okay? The question, does he deserve to be a trillionaire, Elon Musk, is a distraction. I understand why people ask it because it's such an astronomical number, but that's really the question here.

22:08I've lived in this world of ours long enough to understand that inequity is real. Sometimes things just don't feel fair, okay? Yes, the concentration of wealth at the extreme end of the spectrum raises legitimate questions about society and economics and tax policy and all kinds of stuff. Those are really important conversations that we need to have, but they are not the conversation that helps you build your business. The conversation that helps you build your business is this. Am I solving a real problem? Is my solution genuinely better than the current alternatives out there? and am I reaching enough people who have that problem?

22:49Those three questions are imperative for you as a business owner so that you can get better at this thing called business. If you can answer those questions honestly, those questions, those answers to those questions are going to move your business in a direction that's going to help you and not hurt you. Here's the thing. The marketplace doesn't care about your intentions. It doesn't care about your efforts. It doesn't care about your likability. Elon Musk is a good example of this. He's hated by most people, okay? But the marketplace values what you create, right? And as you can see, this guy's a trillionaire for a reason.

23:24He created a lot of value to the marketplace. And we can analyze how he got there and why he's lucky or privileged or all this other stuff, right? We could talk about all that, but that's not the point. The point is that the end result of what he produced has provided a lot of value to the world. And therefore, the world has compensated for him for that value. So what you need to understand is like, how much value is your business actually bringing to people? Are people actually benefiting from what you're providing, whether it's a product, a service, maybe you're even providing free content like we do with our podcast.

24:00Is it providing something that actually helps people in a significant way where they really can't do without? Like, for example, if your business went away today, it just evaporated, right? It just completely disappeared. will people be upset or will they just go to somebody else? That's a really honest question to ask. For example, with Elon, if Tesla just evaporated all of a sudden and there's no more Tesla, yeah, it's going to upset a lot of people because it's a high value car and a lot of people like these cars. If SpaceX never existed, right, all of a sudden SpaceX just went bust and it's gone.