It’s early 2014 — the time when Mary Beth Brown decided to ask for a raise but never thought that it would put an end to her 12-year long professional relationship with Elon Musk.
Brown had been working for the modern-day Tony Stark Elon Musk for 12 years. She worked really hard as she would travel back and forth between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley every week, work late at night, and even on the weekends.
She used to handle Musk’s scheduling across two companies (SpaceX and Tesla), manage public relations, and often help Musk make business decisions.
She was like an extension of Musk. At least, she would feel that way.
Ashlee Vance, in his book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” mentioned this story and described Brown like this —
“Brown — or MB, as everyone called her — became Musk’s loyal assistant, establishing a real-life version of the relationship between Iron Man’s Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. If Musk worked a twenty-hour day, so too did Brown. Over the years, she brought Musk meals, set up his business appointments, arranged time with his children, picked out his clothes, dealt with press requests, and when necessary yanked Musk out of meetings to keep him on schedule. As a result, she would emerge as the only bridge between Musk and all of his interests and was an invaluable asset to the companies’ employees.”
Ashlee also mentioned that Brown had an outstanding contribution in developing SpaceX’s early culture as she paid close attention to every detail and helped balance the vibe around the office.
So, in the early 2014, Brown went to Musk with high hope and asked for a raise. To be specific, she wanted to be compensated as per SpaceX’s top executives.
Do you know what Elon Musk told her in response? He told Brown to take a couple of weeks off so that he would realize the value of Brown’s responsibilities (in her absence). Actually, Musk wanted to realize how indispensable Brown was for him.
“I told her, ‘Look, I think you’re very valuable. Maybe that compensation is right. You need to take two weeks’ vacation, and I’m going to assess whether that’s true or not,’” Musk said, according to Ashlee’s footnotes.