Elon Musk Would Survive Farming
- Grant Wiese
- 16 hours ago
- 6 min read
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Elon Musk Would Survive Farming
What Tesla and SpaceX can teach farmers about dominating hard times.
I just listened to the biography of Elon Musk written by Walter Isaacson. In the book, there are a few recurring themes that continue to show the brilliance of Elon and how he managed to get ahead when the cards were stacked against him so many times. This can often be the feel of agriculture. When margins are tight, we are in a down cycle, and there are multiple years of losses stacked on top of each other, it feels like the cards are stacked against us too. Elon lived in this type of environment when he was building Tesla and SpaceX, and he continues pushing the limits today.
Cutting costs and efficiency are his gift, which, ironically enough, is exactly what many farmers are trying to do to make money on their operation right now.
Here are a few of the crucial takeaways which you can apply to agriculture to help you run your business:
Crisis Mode
Elon’s very fond of making unrealistic timelines for getting large projects done to accelerate the urgency of his team and move forward at a quicker pace, which was crucial to keeping his businesses alive. If Tesla and SpaceX had screwed around and taken years to figure out or find solutions, they would have been bankrupt many times over before finding any type of success. These accelerated, forced timelines on his team created a sense of urgency and results that are unfounded in most of today’s environments and businesses. Elon can get done in six weeks what many businesses may take three years to accomplish.
This paid dividends when he was trying to scale Tesla. In doing the math, he realized that they needed to be able to produce 5,000 cars per week in order to be successful. Unfortunately, at that time, their assembly lines were producing less than 2,000 cars per week. He sent the entire operation into crisis mode, where every aspect of the assembly line and production line was brought into question. Items that were automated were thrown out if they could not work quickly enough to produce the necessary 5,000 cars per week. Every single process was questioned.
The slowest part of the assembly line was reworked until it could keep up with the rest of the line, and then the next slowest part was reworked until it could keep up with the assembly line. This continued over and over again until he was able to double the production speed of his assembly line.
This is what each of us needs to be doing with our cash flow every single year. We need to go through every line item on our tax return and every expense out there to find out how we can make each item more efficient. That might be six hours of work figuring out how to decrease your fuel costs or become more efficient. It could be changing how your sprayer operates to save on the chemical bill and then calling your chemical provider to see if there are cheaper, different generic options that can be bought. It could be calling five different providers to see how they compare to your original chemical provider. It could be doing research on new chemicals and technologies to determine if something could be tried and made better, more efficient, or more cost-effective within your operation.
Same with fertilizer. Does this operation have the tools to apply our fertilizer more efficiently or to be able to do less? Have we talked with our agronomist to determine if we can cut back on anything? Do we have soil samples on all our fields for variable rate?
You should spend days or even weeks on these items to find significant efficiencies and cost savings.
Burn the Box
Now, even after all of this work, just like farmers are dealing with today, Elon still was not meeting his 5,000-car-per-week number on his assembly line. He was actually 1,500 cars per week short, even after they thought they had squeezed all of the efficiencies out of their assembly line and made it as fast as possible, with no slowdowns anywhere. He had very little time to get production ramped up, or Tesla would have been out of money.
What did he do? They could not legally expand upon their current facility or get anything built in time to increase their assembly line. He ended up buying a massive tent, putting it in the parking lot, and creating a third assembly line (there were two inside the building). This third outdoor assembly line under the tent was able to be set up in just a few weeks and was able to produce the last 1,500 cars per week that Elon needed to reach his 5,000-car goal, which was necessary to keep them in business and create a positive cash flow for Tesla.
Farmers need to think this way as well. Start with the expenses and cut everything you can. When there’s nothing more you can squeeze out of it without risking harming your cash flow, you have to turn to the other side and find any legal means necessary to generate the necessary income to become profitable year after year after year.
This could be vertical integration or starting a business that relates to farming with your current equipment or resources that you have. Are you utilizing your storage to its fullest potential? Do you have some acres that are waste ground that could be improved upon? What business related to agriculture is your community in dire need of that you can provide the resources for?
There are thousands of businesses out there related to agriculture or diversifying within grain or livestock. There are ways to make the changes, adjust, and think outside of the box, to pitch a tent in the parking lot and bridge the gap that is needed to have a positive cash flow in the next year.
Delete, Delete, Delete
Another philosophy of Elon’s that has worked wonders and created efficiency in his businesses, particularly in SpaceX, is his philosophy of “delete.” The space industry is notoriously inefficient, with vendors working with vendors to provide parts that are significantly overpriced, like paying $1,000 for a plastic piece on your rocket that is identical to a plastic piece in your dishwasher that you can buy for $8. This is a lot like the government and its inefficiencies.
Elon loves to delete. He deleted all of the vendors and found his own sources to buy or produce the products at significantly cheaper prices, making SpaceX feasible from the private sector. Or, if he’s going far enough, he will actually delete the product entirely. He is a huge fan of eliminating or trying to eliminate basically everything on the spaceship. He expects failure to happen at some point. In fact, if you don’t have failure when you’re deleting, then you did not go far enough. Eventually, you should delete something that was vital enough that something breaks down and doesn’t go right.
P.S. I don’t encourage that you do this with equipment. Equipment breakdowns are extremely expensive, so don’t go removing anything too important from your tractor. Elon would delete until something didn’t work, and then he would know that he needed to add that part back in.
Again, I think of all the expenses that farmers run up and accrue in buying parts, supplies, chemicals, fertilizer, personal vehicles, semis, trailers, living expenses, personal vacations, etc. There is just too much glut in so many of these operations. Take a page out of Elon’s book and work on deleting the excess in your life. Many of us could easily shave $30,000 off of our annual tax filings if we just had the discipline to delete little things in our lives.
Summary
There are some extraordinary lessons in this book, a lot more than I just covered, but “crisis mode,” “thinking outside of the box,” and “deleting” were some of the main takeaways that I took from this excellent lesson. I encourage you to check it out and then head to your cash flow to start deleting.
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