The Lesson My Grandmother Taught Me About Dignity and Hard Work—A Story Elon Musk Will Never Forget

Before we begin, take a moment to think about the people who shaped your understanding of work. Maybe you’ve had jobs others looked down on. Maybe you’ve wondered what real work ethic looks like in a world that sometimes forgets its value. Maybe you remember someone who taught you that dignity isn’t about what you do, but how you do it.

This story is for you.

The Roots of Dignity

My British grandmother, Kora Amelia Robinson, taught me the most important lesson about work I’ve ever learned. It didn’t come from business school or from successful entrepreneurs. It came from watching a woman clean other people’s houses so her family could eat.

My nana was born into poverty in England during the Great Depression. She was one of those working-class girls with no one to protect her, no safety net, no advantages except her own hands and her willingness to use them. When times got desperate and there was no money for food, she did what she had to do. She cleaned houses for wealthy families, scrubbing floors, washing dishes, and polishing furniture to earn enough to survive.

She never spoke about this work with shame. She never acted like it was beneath her or something she was doing temporarily until something better came along. To her, it was honest work that served a purpose, and that was enough to make it honorable.

I was young when she told me these stories—maybe seven or eight years old. I remember thinking that cleaning houses didn’t sound very important. I was already fascinated by computers and rockets and grand ideas about changing the world. In my childish mind, I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to spend their time cleaning up after other people.

But my nana looked at me with those sharp eyes that had seen so much hardship and said something I’ll never forget:
“Elon, there’s no such thing as work that doesn’t matter if it’s done with dignity. I cleaned those houses better than anyone because that’s what they paid me for. And when you take someone’s money, you give them your best effort. That’s what honor means.”

She wasn’t giving me a lecture about the nobility of service or the importance of humble work. She was teaching me something more fundamental—that integrity isn’t about what you do, it’s about how you do it.

Excellence as a Habit

At the time, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. It took me decades of building companies, managing employees, and observing human nature to realize that my grandmother had taught me one of the most important principles of success:
Excellence is a habit, not a destination.

When I started my first company, Zip2, I found myself doing all kinds of work that felt beneath what I thought I was capable of. I was a programmer with big ideas about the future of the internet. But I spent countless hours doing data entry, cold-calling potential customers, stuffing envelopes, cleaning the office, and handling tasks that any entry-level employee could have done.

I remember feeling frustrated that I was wasting my time on mundane work when I could have been coding or developing strategy. But then I would think about my nana, down on her hands and knees scrubbing someone else’s floors, treating that work with the same care and attention she would give to any task that mattered to her family’s survival.

If she could clean houses with dignity and excellence, I could stuff envelopes with dignity and excellence. If she could take pride in work that others might look down on, I could take pride in whatever work needed to be done to build something meaningful.

This lesson became the foundation of how I approach every task, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. When I’m reviewing a technical document, I read it as carefully as if lives depend on it—because sometimes they do. When I’m in a meeting about logistics or supply chain issues, I give it the same attention I would give to designing a rocket engine. When I’m responding to emails or making decisions about personnel, I treat those tasks with the same seriousness I bring to major strategic planning.

Here’s what my grandmother understood that many successful people never learn:
How you do anything is how you do everything.
You can’t turn excellence on and off like a switch. You can’t decide to care about quality only when the stakes feel high enough. Excellence is a practice that you develop through thousands of small acts of caring about your work, regardless of who’s watching or what you’re getting paid.

The Real Value of Work

My nana didn’t clean houses excellently because she loved cleaning houses. She cleaned houses excellently because she loved her family and understood that the money she earned through that work would feed them. The excellence wasn’t about the task. It was about the purpose behind the task.

This is why I have such deep respect for people who do what others consider simple work—the janitors in my factories, the housekeeping staff in my offices, the people who maintain our facilities and keep our workspaces clean. They’re carrying on the same tradition my grandmother lived by. They’re doing necessary work with care and attention, and that deserves the same respect we give to any other essential function.

I make it a point to thank these workers personally, to learn their names, to ask about their families—not because I’m trying to be a good boss or create good publicity, but because I genuinely understand the value of what they do. They’re maintaining the environment where innovation happens. They’re creating the conditions where important work can be done well.

My grandmother taught me that there’s dignity in all honest work. But she also taught me something else:
Some of the hardest working people in the world are invisible to those who think work is only valuable if it’s complicated, high-paid, or prestigious.

During the Great Depression, my nana wasn’t just cleaning houses. She was solving problems. She was figuring out how to stretch a small income to cover basic needs. She was managing logistics, getting from house to house efficiently, organizing her time, coordinating with other household staff. She was developing customer service skills, understanding what different employers valued, adapting her approach to different personalities, maintaining relationships that would lead to consistent work.

She was running a small business, even though no one would have called it that. She was the CEO of her own survival, and she ran that operation with more strategic thinking and attention to detail than many people bring to much more complex enterprises.

Lessons for Life and Business

When I’m working on manufacturing processes at Tesla, trying to figure out how to build cars more efficiently, I often think about the systematic approach my grandmother brought to her cleaning work. She had routes planned out, supply chains organized, quality standards that she never compromised on, and customer relationships that she maintained over years.

She understood something that many business leaders struggle with:
Excellence in execution is more valuable than brilliance in conception.
You can have the most innovative product idea in the world, but if you can’t execute it with consistent quality, it won’t matter. You can have the most sophisticated strategy, but if your team doesn’t bring excellence to the daily work of implementation, the strategy will fail.

My grandmother’s approach to cleaning houses taught me how to approach building rockets. The same attention to detail, the same commitment to doing every small task as well as it can be done, the same understanding that shortcuts in execution lead to failures and outcomes.

At SpaceX, we have a saying:
“The rocket is only as strong as its weakest component.”
That principle came directly from watching my nana approach her work. She understood that you can’t do 90% of a job well and ignore the other 10%. When you’re cleaning a house, every room matters. When you’re building a rocket, every component matters. When you’re raising children or running a company or trying to solve any complex problem, every detail matters.

Becoming Who You Are

But beyond the practical lessons about excellence and attention to detail, my grandmother taught me something even more important:
Work is not just about what you produce—it’s about who you become through the process of producing it.

Cleaning houses during the Depression didn’t just provide income for my nana. It built her character. It taught her persistence, resilience, adaptability, and humility. It showed her that she could handle whatever life threw at her, that she could find a way to survive and even thrive in circumstances that would break other people.

Those qualities—the persistence, the resilience, the willingness to do whatever was necessary to achieve important goals—became part of who she was. And because they became part of who she was, she passed them on to her children and grandchildren.

I don’t think I would have had the perseverance to keep going through the early failures at SpaceX if I hadn’t grown up hearing stories about my grandmother’s determination to keep working even when the work was difficult and the pay was small. I don’t think I would have been willing to live on so little money during the early days of my companies if I hadn’t learned from her that comfort is nice but not necessary. That you can maintain your dignity and your sense of purpose even when your circumstances are challenging.

The Legacy of Honest Work

When Tesla was almost bankrupt and I was sleeping on the factory floor, I thought about my nana working late into the evening to finish cleaning a house so she could earn enough to buy food for the next day. When SpaceX rockets were exploding and everyone was telling me that private space companies were impossible, I thought about her persistence in finding cleaning work even during the worst economic conditions in modern history.

She had shown me that when you believe your work serves a purpose bigger than yourself, you can endure almost any hardship, overcome almost any obstacle, persist through almost any setback.

This is why I get frustrated when people talk about certain kinds of work as if they’re not real jobs or not worthy of respect. Every job that serves a useful purpose and is done with integrity is a real job. Every person who shows up consistently, does their best work, and takes pride in contributing something valuable to the world deserves respect, regardless of what their title is or how much they’re paid.

My grandmother cleaned houses for food, but she also cleaned houses for dignity, for purpose, for the satisfaction of doing necessary work well. She understood something that many people in prestigious careers never learn:
Meaning in work doesn’t come from external recognition or high salaries. It comes from knowing that your efforts matter, that you’re contributing something valuable, that you’re doing your part to make the world function a little better.

The Final Lesson

Today, when I walk through Tesla factories or SpaceX facilities, I see echoes of my grandmother’s work ethic in the people who build our products. The technicians who assemble battery packs with precision and care. The engineers who double-check calculations even when they’re tired. The maintenance workers who keep our equipment running smoothly. They’re all practicing the same principles my nana lived by.

They understand that excellence isn’t about having the perfect job or the ideal circumstances. Excellence is about bringing your full attention and effort to whatever work is in front of you, because that work is connected to something larger than itself.

My British grandmother never got to see me build rocket ships or electric cars. She died before I became successful in any conventional sense. But every rocket that reaches orbit, every car that rolls off our production line, every breakthrough we achieve, it all carries the influence of those lessons she taught me about work, dignity, and excellence.

She taught me that there’s no such thing as small work, only small approaches to work. She taught me that how you do anything reflects who you are as a person. She taught me that honest work done with pride and attention is always valuable, regardless of what other people think about it.

Most importantly, she taught me that work isn’t just about earning money or achieving goals. Work is about becoming the kind of person who can be counted on, who takes responsibility seriously, who brings their best effort to whatever they commit to doing.

So when people ask me what drives my work ethic, I don’t usually talk about ambition or vision or wanting to change the world. I talk about my British grandmother, down on her hands and knees cleaning floors during the Great Depression, showing me what real strength looks like.

She never built a company or launched a rocket or created a technology that changed industries, but she built something more important. She built character—her own character, and through her example, the character of everyone who was lucky enough to learn from her.

That’s the most valuable thing anyone can build. And it’s available to anyone who’s willing to approach their work—whatever that work is—with the same dignity, excellence, and sense of purpose that Kora Amelia Robinson brought to cleaning houses so her family could eat.