财富年度商业人物之母的育儿经

    她的两个儿子大学毕业后就搬到了加利福尼亚，创办了电子目录公司Zip2。梅耶每月能有2,000美元盈余，于是她用这笔钱每隔六周前去陪儿子们一个星期。剩下的钱，无论多少，就送给儿子们。【据梅耶回忆，当时，这两位斗志旺盛的创始人在基督教青年会（the Y）洗澡，晚上就睡在桌子底下。】有一次，梅耶与金巴尔去印刷服务公司Kinko's打印商务演示的彩色复印件，当然是当妈的付钱。这两位创始人第二天要带着这些材料去见一位风险投资人。而正是那次会面为埃隆和金巴尔赢得了第一笔投资。

    梅耶发现她很快又要搬家了。托斯卡离开了温哥华，去加州的山景城与两位兄弟一起创业，他们一直邀请梅耶加入。她卖掉了在多伦多的营养学公司，期待着能在美国获得成功——毕竟所有美国人都希望能有一位营养师。当然，她再一次面临从零开始的境地。梅耶发现山景城的生活枯燥乏味，所以她住在了旧金山，努力学习美国度量制（营养师协会的规定），开始重新构想她的商业模式。她买不起汽车，于是租了一辆。每个周六上午，她在诺德斯特龙（Nordstrom）完成走秀，下午便前往帕洛阿尔托看望她的孩子们，给他们提些建议。

    1998年，Zip2开始有所起色。那一年，梅耶50岁，她的儿子们送给她一辆木制小汽车和木制的小房子。有一天，他们说，我们会给你买真正的汽车和房子。第二年，康柏电脑公司（Compaq）以3.05亿美元收购了他们的公司——他们要实现承诺，为梅耶买一栋房子，而这一次，她决定搬到远离孩子们的地方。之前去曼哈顿旅游的经历让她决定去那里定居。

    “（纽约人）快言快语，他们走路快，说话快，正好适合我的类型，”她说道。

    梅耶在曼哈顿居住了13年——就在公园大道与百老汇之间的22号大街。她的模特职业也成就非凡。【除了登上《纽约》杂志外，她还曾出现在《时代》杂志（Time）的一期健康专刊的封面上，还曾以圣诞夫人的形象登上了塔吉特（Target）在时代广场（Times Square）上的节日广告牌。】而这一次，她又创办了自己的营养师公司。

    与此同时，金巴尔在科罗拉多州创办了一家餐厅，托斯卡在洛杉矶成立了一家制片公司，而埃隆则联合创办了PayPal，后来又把它卖给了eBay，然后继续他非凡的创业之旅，最终让他成为《财富》年度商业人物。

    大约八个月前， 托斯卡又说服了母亲搬到离家人近的地方。她和埃隆住在洛杉矶。托斯卡有一对双胞胎。金巴尔则计划在洛杉矶也开一家餐厅。

    穆斯克家族的成员虽然都非常独立，但他们似乎不能离开家人太久。梅耶表示，他们都还年轻，“希望用自己的方式，做自己的事情。”

    或许这是因为苹果不会落到离树很远的地方。梅耶承认：“我一直凭感觉做事。所以，他们有这样的思维方式再正常不过。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    After her sons graduated from college, Elon and Kimbal moved to California and started electronic directory company Zip2. Maye had about $2,000 to spare per month, so she used it to visit her sons every six weeks for a week. Whatever was left over was theirs for the taking. (At the time, the scrappy startup founders were showering at the Y and sleeping under their desks, Maye recalls.) During one of her visits, Maye went to Kinko's with Kimbal to print colored copies – that mom was paying for – of the boys' business presentation to take to a venture capitalist the next morning. That meeting was where Elon and Kimbal got their first investment.

    Maye soon found herself packing boxes again. Tosca had recently left Vancouver to join the Musk boys in Mountain View, Calif., and they were all clamoring for Maye to join. She sold her Toronto dietitian business, expecting she would find great success in America -- where everyone wanted a dietitian! -- and, yet again, started from scratch. Maye found Mountain View boring, so she lived in San Francisco and worked to learn American metrics, dietitian union rules, and reframe her business model. She couldn't afford a car, so she would rent one, visiting and advising her children in Palo Alto on Saturday afternoons after modeling in Nordstrom (JWN) runway shows in the mornings.

    In 1998, Zip2's success began to sink in. That year, Maye turned 50, and her sons presented her with a tiny wood car and a tiny wood house. One day, they said, we'll buy you the real thing. Compaq (HPQ) bought the business a year later for $305 million -- and they offered to buy Maye the promised home, but this time she decided to settle far from her children. An earlier visit to Manhattan convinced her to relocate there.

    "[New Yorkers] speak fast, they walk fast, they talk fast," she says. "These are my kind of people."

    Maye lived in Manhattan -- on 22nd between Park Ave. and Broadway -- for 13 years. Her modeling career picked up. (Besides her New York Magazine gig, she's appeared on the cover of a special health issue of Time magazine and as Mrs. Claus on a Target (TGT) holiday billboard in Times Square.) Yet again, she restarted her dietitian business.

    Kimbal, meanwhile, launched a restaurant business in Colorado, and Tosca started a production company in Los Angeles. Oh, and Elon co-founded and sold PayPal to eBay (EBAY) and went on to the extraordinary entrepreneurial feats that merit him Fortune's Businessperson of the Year.

    About eight months ago, Tosca again convinced her mother to move closer to family. She and Elon live in Los Angeles. Tosca has twin babies. Kimbal is looking to open a restaurant in the area.

    The Musks can't seem to stay away from each other for too long, yet they're all fiercely independent. Since they were young, they "wanted to do their own thing," says Maye. "In their own ways."

    Perhaps that's because the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. "I live by the seat of my pants," Maye confesses. "So it's quite normal for them to think that way."