When I arrived in Vancouver, he showed me his hazmat suit. It was scary.
Then we left and flew to six major Canadian cities with nutritional science departments who could accept me for a PhD. Five said yes, Montreal said no as my French wasn’t good enough. The University of Toronto offered me a research officer position. I told them I would probably accept the offer from a South African University and will be returning in two years. However, while I was away, Tosca had sold my home in Johannesburg, so we moved to Toronto in two weeks. That story is in my new book, TIMELESS.
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.