Elun Musk is constantly failing: here's how he turns that into success.

Handled with grace.

Elon Musk is simultaneously launching rockets, mastering the electric car, and trying to colonize Mars. As such, he's no stranger to missed deadlines and setbacks. Here's how the Tesla and SpaceX founder takes ownership of his failures and learns from them.

1. Learn how to make do with less.

"The reason I ended up being the chief engineer or chief designer was not because I wanted to. It was because I couldn't hire anyone. Nobody good would join. So I ended up being that by default," Musk said about SpaceX's early days in a 2017 speech in Australia.

2. Don't take your eye off the ball.

"The first time I took a week off, the Orbital Sciences rocket exploded," Musk said during a TV interview on September 27, 2015. "In that same week, the second time I took a week off, my rocket exploded. The lesson here is don't take a week off."

3. The fifth time is a charm (at least for the Falcon I launch).

“There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough," said Musk in a 2005 interview with Fast Company. 

4. Beware of hubris.

“The mistake we made with the Model X is that we put too many great things all at once into a product. In retrospect, it would’ve been a better decision to do fewer things,” Musk told investors on February 10, 2016. "I do think there is some hubris there with the X."

5. Set expectations.

There is a “real good chance the [Falcon Heavy] does not make it to orbit. ... I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad–I would consider even that a win, to be honest,” said Musk at a July 2017 conference. The rocket launched successfully in February.

6. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

A battery supplier "dropped the ball," delaying Tesla Model 3 shipments. "We had to rewrite all of the software from scratch. ... This is what I’ve spent many a late night at the Gigafactory working on," Musk told investors last October.

7. If all else fails, just admit you're not a deadline person.

“We are building the first Mars, or interplanetary ship, and I think we’ll be able to do short trips, flights by the first half of next year," Musk said at SxSW on March 11, 2018. He  was quick to add, “Although sometimes, my timelines are a little, you know…”

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