Why would Elon Musk sell flamethrowers and want to make candy
Elon Musk is a PR sorcerer. He's a billionaire in part because of this. I will tell you how to use Elon Musk's hype method to promote your business.
The world knows Elon Musk as a serial entrepreneur, a fantasizing billionaire, and a man who actually pushes progress forward. Most people know Elon Musk from the Tesla brand of electric cars. But Tesla isn't his only brainchild, though it's the most promoted one.
Elon Musk's companies
SpaceX
In May 2002, Musk founded his third company - SpaceX. It is a private developer of a series of launch vehicles and a commercial operator of space systems.
Tesla
An American company, manufacturer of electric vehicles, and (through its subsidiary SolarCity) storage solutions for electrical energy. In March 2018, the company's shareholders voted to raise Elon Musk's salary to $3 billion per year.
SolarCity The company's shareholders voted to raise Elon Musk's salary to $3 billion a year.
An American energy company based in San Mateo, California, a subsidiary of Tesla.
OpenAI
A nonprofit research company from San Francisco dealing with artificial intelligence. The company's goal is to develop an open, friendly AI. One of its founders is Elon Musk.
Neuralink
American neurotechnological company, founded by Elon Musk, which plans to develop and produce implantable neurocomputer interfaces.
The Boring Company
The construction company dealing with infrastructure and tunneling was founded by Elon Musk in 2016.
It's very possible that while I was writing this article, Elon Musk opened a couple more. All of Elon Musk's companies are grand startups, living off private investment. Except for SpaceX, which has a partial contract from NASA.
All Elon Musk's projects are grandiose in scale. In each of them, he aims at the billionth market and plans to irrevocably change the balance of power. And at the same time, Elon Musk excites the world public with regular reports, which look absurd against the background of his main activity. For example, in January 2018, Musk called himself a zombie defender and sold 10,000 flamethrowers. Only the laziest media have not written about this strange prank. And on May 5, 2018, Elon tweeted about the future pastry factory. And the whole world is sucking up to the news again.
Why would Elon Musk sell flamethrowers? I'm sure he must have made some good money on them. We're reading the official report and wondering if the profit for the flamethrowers is $5 million. How much is that? I'll be blunt - for Elon Musk, it's an inconspicuous amount. His official salary at Tesla alone is $3 billion a year! What is it anyway - 10,000 sold flamethrowers, is it much or little? For comparison: Samsung sold almost 318 million smartphones in 2017. That's 32,000 times more than the Musk of his flamethrowers. For the record, his favorite toy, Tesla, is losing $6500 a minute. That is, all profits for flamethrowers went to 13 hours of Tesla's existence! And I haven't counted yet how much Elon Musk has spent developing his flamethrower...
So why would Elon Musk sell flamethrowers and open candy factories? And why do we keep learning about his crazy altruistic projects?
Elon Musk is a hype genius
The well-being of Elon Musk's companies depends directly on private investment. There are no profits in his projects yet, and by and large, they generate losses. Without a regular injection of new investments, Elon's companies are doomed. Investors intend to make money, but nobody knows exactly when it will happen.
It turns out that Elon Musk's business is to attract as many investments here and now as possible. And to do that, he needs worldwide publicity. Elon Musk needs everyone to know about him and preferably to talk about him all the time. At least in a humorous way.
And now judge: if the term of development-test-deployment of SpaceX is 10 years, can this project be a constant source of news? Yes, from time to time there are launches and some missiles fall. It's very cleverly littered in the media, but it's not exactly what Musk needs. And SpaceX has no other info leads. Producing new space technology is a tedious routine.
It turns out that the main Elon Musk companies do not have enough hype news to constantly remind about themselves. That's why Elon is giving the people of the world nightmares with flamethrowers and candy. That's the kind of hype he needs. Spent a million or two on flamethrowers, and then all the world's media have been writing about it for a month. The crazier the news, the more profitable the Musk. He's a hype genius.
How to use the Elon Musk method to promote his business...
If your blog had been written by Elon Musk, there would have been articles about autopilot for the Tesla that was next to the visions of returning missiles. Flamethrowers would burn zombies, and Musk's caramel factory project would be jealous of Willy Wonka himself. And this blog would certainly have been super popular and quoted in all the media. Elon Musk would have created hype posts.
There's nothing stopping you from doing the same. You don't have to sell flamethrowers to do it at all. Just start a blog so it's interesting to read. When people ask me how to write a hype post, I always remember a case from life. My entrepreneur friend is pouring silicone molds for finishing materials. His silicone (which is not silicone at all) is an author's design, and the composition is kept secret. The material is amazing and is superior to the popular silicone in all aspects. So, my friend wanted to pour out the dildo and try to sell it. That would be a hype, I tell you! It's definitely more fun to read than dry articles about production.
Fantasize, play with filing, experiment with formats. Tie the hype to your business and blog about it. It's cool if you write on a semantic core. It gives long life to your articles. Well, it's much cooler to swim on the crest of a hype when your article is popular because the topic is hot.
Of course, there's no single piece of advice on how to do it in practice. It's my job to set the vector, yours to implement. I wish you good luck!