Founders: #309 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Before He Was Successful)

One of the most unique things about this podcast is that I know the founder of every company

that advertises on founders. I know Chris and Andrew from Tiny. I know Anil from Meter

and I know Mateo from Eight Sleep. And I do this, well, first of all, because all of them

listen to founders, so it makes building a relationship a lot easier. But the primary

reason I do this is because I only want supporters of the podcast that live and breathe their product.

In every case, we share the same obsession for the quality of the products that we make

in the businesses that we are building. And Eight Sleep is one of the supporters of this episode

and the founder Mateo and I actually live in the same city. A few months after I started using

Eight Sleep, I randomly ran into Mateo at a restaurant. I was with some founder friends of mine

and I went over and said, hi, when I got back to my table, my friend asked me who that was. And I

was like, oh, that's Mateo, the founder of Eight Sleep. And my friend replied, he said the funny

thing. He said, oh, he looks like he gets good sleep. Mateo is living and breathing his product.

I've never had the ability to change the temperature of my bed before I had an Eight Sleep.

I had no idea how much that would improve the quality of my sleep. I keep my Eight Sleep

ice cold. I make sure it's cold even before I get into bed so I can fall asleep faster and I wake

up less during the night. There are very few no brainer investments in life and I believe an Eight

Sleep is one of them. You can get yours by going to eightsleep.com forward slash founders. They'll

give you $150 off for being a founder's listener. They ship all over. They ship in America, the UK,

certain parts of Europe and Australia. Go to eightsleep.com forward slash founders and get $150

off today. Another supporter of founders and this episode is our good friends at Tiny. Tiny is the

easiest way for you to sell your business. They provide straightforward cash exits for founders.

I want to read something to you from their very first shareholder letter as a public company.

And it's about the fact that they built their entire processes focused on founders. So it says,

while our roots lie in the technology industry, we will consider any business that we feel we are

capable of understanding our companies range from enterprise software to a coffee maker company

to a social network. We and this is so important that they made it bold and underline it. We have

built a process focused on founders. This means our deals are fast. Our diligence is focused on

what really matters and we give the founder full flexibility to either stay and run the business

or transition to a new CEO. Sometimes founders sail off and sell everything. Sometimes they

continue to advise and hold on a minority stake. Other times they choose to keep running the business.

It is 100% driven by the founder. Most importantly, we make a commitment to not ruin the business. They

spent a decade building. We do not flip businesses. We keep the DNA of the company the same and operate

them for the long term. If you are a founder and you're thinking of selling your business now or

in the future, make sure you email Tiny first. You can email them at high at tiny.com. I'll also

leave their email address in the description below. There's one other thing from the shareholder

letter that I want to read to you because there's a lot of venture capitalists that listen to the

spot guests as well. Tiny is also looking for things they call venture misfits. It says these

are businesses that would be phenomenal but for their cap table. They have dedicated teams, good

growth and strong potential for profits. However, because they've raised tens of millions of dollars

and are not doubling in size every year, venture capitalists that are on the boards of these companies

usually check out once they realize they'll not be a unicorn and generally just want it off their

plate. Because of this incentive misalignment, we consistently seen an unfair advantage in making

the process quick and painless for sellers. If you have a company in your portfolio that sounds

like that, make sure you email Tiny at high at tiny.com. This podcast and this episode is also

supported by our friends at Meter. Meter gives you faster, simpler, more secure internet and

Wi-Fi for your business. Meter can work in any commercial space whether it's an office, a warehouse,

a lab, everywhere. Meter believes that setting up internet service that can grow right along with

your business should be as easy as setting up electricity and telephones. I mentioned earlier

that I love founders that live and breathe their product. The type of founders who are obsessed

with the quality of the products that they are making and the businesses they are building. The

founders of Meter are these kind of people. I'm going to read from this piece that was in Bloomberg

It's actually written by Ashley Vance. Ashley Vance was the guy that wrote the first Elon

Musk biography like probably five or six years ago. And this is what obsession with quality

sounds like. It says, after they sold their first networking company, they moved into a single room

in a hostel in China where they sought manufacturing partners to build the routers and switches

that they need. We'd spend all day at the factory and then we'd sleep on the factory floor

because we wanted to learn everything about the manufacturing process. I didn't even have a bed

because it was covered in circuit boards. Every business needs secure, fast and reliable internet

and Wi-Fi. With obsessed founders like that, you know that you're in good hands. Choosing

Meter is a no brainer. Smart founders in all industries are using Meter for their Wi-Fi

and network needs so that they can then focus on what they do best. One of my favorite things about

Meter is how easy they make it for the customer. That is a main theme in the history of entrepreneurship

that you and I talked about over and over again. All you have to do is give Meter your address and

your square footage of your commercial space and they take care of the rest even better.

There's no upfront cost to you. This means that you can expand your business without worrying

about expensive upfront cost. Meter grows right along with your business. You simply pay one

monthly rate. Whether you need secure internet for a single office or an entire building,

make sure you go to meter.com forward slash founders. It explains all the value that meter

can provide for your business. Again, that is meter.com forward slash founders. Arnold mentioned

that a particular incident of rejection had influenced his motivation to succeed on his

own terms. I felt cheated, he said. My parents sent me to a farm and took mine art, that's his

brother, on vacation. I was sent to my godmother's farm 50 miles away when they took my brother to

Vienna and Salzburg and all these other places. I was 10. I was left there for two months. I was

in denial that they had gone away without me. I knew it had an impact on me. It gave me the will,

desire and drive that normal life doesn't create. They discounted Arnold from the start

with no one encouraging his vast potential until age 15. Arnold's father Gustav returned from

the miserable front of World War Two defeated. He was now a 38 year old man, diminished but

domineering. Gustav's militaristic regulations blanketed his sons. Arnold obeyed his father

without question. Discipline, consistency and excellence became his family's motto. Gustav

drank, an entire story in two words. He forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right

angles. They had to keep their elbows to their waist. If the boys did not obey, the back of his

hand was quick to strike their face. Arnold's father pitted his two sons against each other.

He made them compete in every activity. Because his brother was older, his brother would usually

be the one to win. Arnold's going to turn all of this into fuel and drive. A swift learner of life,

Arnold often covered more value from associating with those older than him. Some of the older guys

in his town worked out in a makeshift gym. They invited him in. By 15, building a stronger body

became all that mattered to Arnold. He found old bodybuilding magazines around the gym. He spotted

Reg Park on a magazine page. His eyes opened to the future. Arnold was inspired to learn that Reg

had earned a lucrative income through his physique and had made his way into movies. Arnold instantly

resonated with Reg Park's path and chose to replicate his professional life. Reg became

Arnold's silent mentor. His life began to flourish through the art and science of bodybuilding.

Arnold ate it, slept it, worked it, imagined it, thought it, believed it, and trusted it.

Bodybuilding became his existence. A muscle obsession allowed him to endure

his parents' complaints and derision over his bizarre obsession. He sacrificed a routine life.

He dispossessed himself of all current norms to become the Reg Park of Europe. He dug into

master self-discipline. Not only did he improve his muscularity, but he also developed a hardened

outer shell. He had no time to waste on naysayers. He aligned only with those who shared his passion.

He knew that to succeed according to his manic standards, he needed to master an individual sport.

His entire being forged a lifetime plan to build upon his muscles, build a way out of town,

a way out of his country, and a way out of this continent. His intelligence did not show on his

report cards, yet he mastered his goals like a wizard. That part reminded me of Lyndon Johnson.

LBJ has one of my favorite maxims. He said, if you do everything, you will win. This sounds exactly

like where we are in Arnold's life. His singular concentration provided a rock solid belief in

his own potential. Arnold had a deep-seated need to prove himself. He talked his way into managing

a gym in Munich. He never looked back to his tiny country for any further resources towards his

climb. In Munich, he was happy to meet crazy new friends who also practiced a similar resourcefulness

to train and eat without financial worries. The results paid off. He won three contests in 1966.

No time could be lost in his training. Emotionality had no place. Arnold felt as if he stood alone,

unable to relate to anyone. Who could possibly share his excessive drive

for both bodybuilding and his business goals? Not even his peers could understand the enormity

of his lifetime dreams. His lifestyle remained centered around the gym. He developed an obsessive

drive for public acclaim. He became the world's youngest amateur Mr. Universe. After any contest

that he would win, he would say, this is just the next step. You haven't seen anything yet.

He had an inability to experience satisfaction. The 1967 Mr. Universe contest became the turning

point in Arnold's bodybuilding career. He was discovered on London stage by bodybuilder

business tycoon Joe Weeder, who invited him to America to star in Joe's muscle magazines.

Through this new charismatic bodybuilder, Joe could hype his muscle products. Through this

brilliant entrepreneur, Arnold could become an icon to cult believers.

I stumbled upon this book because I was watching the new documentary on Netflix.

It's a three-part series. It's called Arnold. In one of the episodes, Barbara makes an appearance,

and it mentions who she is and the fact that she wrote a book about the six-year relationship

that she had with Arnold Schwarzenegger before he was famous. I didn't remember her name, but all

the way back on episode 193, I read this short, it's like a 115-page autobiography of Arnold when

he was 30 years old. It's called The Education of a Bodybuilder. The book ends with Arnold dumping

his girlfriend. I'm going to read this quote that I think sets up the fundamental mismatch between

Arnold and his girlfriend at the time. And this is what Arnold said.

A conflict grew in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary life,

and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of an ordinary life. She thought that I

would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and then level off. But that's a concept

that has no place in my thinking. For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life

is not simply to exist, to survive, but it is to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, and to conquer.

I wanted to grow. I wanted to continue on. The life she wanted would not permit that.

And so what this podcast is going to be about is this is Arnold before the fame,

before the success. This is the person that built the foundation upon which all his future success

rests upon. Okay, so the main theme of the book is that Arnold is the most goal-oriented person

that Barbara had ever met. And so I want to go right to where they meet. Arnold is 21 years old

at the time. He just got to America. He's living in Southern California, and he's working with Joe

Weider. And so we see this list of goals that he makes for himself. So he has five exact goals

that he wants to accomplish immediately. He wants to rent a one-bedroom apartment near Gold's Gym.

He wants to acquire a motivating training partner. He needs to find a freelance writer to help him

write his required articles for Joe's magazines. He needs to get access to a car, and he needs to

get a raise for his salary from Joe. And so at the end of every chapter, you see the excerpts

from this interview that Barbara does with Arnold when he's the governor of California,

this is the other back in 2004. And so he goes back in time, he's talking about like,

this is why I had this singular focus. There's like a clarity of purpose, I think, when you find

one singular thing that you could focus on, to the exclusion of everything else. Arnold talks

about in interviews and in books and everything else, but he didn't believe in Plan B. He believed

you picked what you want to do, and you burned the boats, and you never doubt yourself. And I think

most people never experienced that in life. I think a lot of people that have never experienced

it actually thinks it's limiting. What I would argue is actually it's the opposite. It frees you,

because you know exactly what your mission is at life. And if you watch the documentary,

read any biographies of Arnold, like your mission can change your life. At first it was bodybuilding,

then it was his movie career, and it was politics. That's why that documentary Netflix is a three

part series. But let's go to the fact that, hey, this is my way out. I'm going to reference that

LBJ Maxim over and over again, because I feel that that is Arnold all day long. If you do everything

you will win, it became clear to me that bodybuilding was the thing for me. This is what

I was meant for at that time. And I then saw very clearly what I could achieve. And that gave me a

tremendous amount of motivation. Instead of training two hours a day, like most people did,

most other bodybuilders, I would train twice a day, totally abnormal, sometimes three times a day,

and sometimes four times a day, I would go home during my lunchtime. And then for an hour straight,

just do sit ups to get that extra hour that no one else had gotten in, just to be ahead of everyone

else. Many people have potential. What separates the champion from the guy that is the second

best or the loser is the person who really has the psychological advantage. Everything is in the

mind. I had a psychological advantage. And he talks about why he's like, I grew up, he grew up

in a house, there's no television, there's no such thing as television, he didn't see his first movie

to was like 10 years old or 15 years old, something like that. There was no indoor plumbing, there

was nothing to do. So he says, I had no other things available, meaning no other distractions.

It was easy to have that drive and develop this kind of attitude of this is my only way out.

Every thought, every action, everything is directed towards this one goal. I always,

and this is why I always felt that my way out was through bodybuilding. I could not have figured

any other way. And so the singular focus on this clarity of mind about what he wants to do actually

makes him really, really easy to understand. If you go through, I probably have, I don't know,

60, 50, 50 or 60 highlights of the book, most of them are not a paragraph long, most of them

are sentence or two. It's very easy to understand him. He makes it very easy for people to interface

with him because he tells you very clearly what's important to him. And you'll see what I mean in

one second. This is the fundamental mismatch between him and Barbara. Remember how he started,

how the quote I just read to you, hey, she wanted, you know, normal life. I hated that very idea.

I thought it repulsive. She wanted me to, I'm always going to grow. I always want to continue.

She, she wanted a life that would not permit that she says multiple times the book like,

why don't you just get a normal job, be a normal person? And she's constantly trying to change

him. And I think the benefit of understanding this is because I think anybody that's trying to do

something different, difficult, like build a business, achieve a goal, must have a supportive

spouse. You either have a supportive spouse or you don't have a spouse. All of the greatest

founders have high levels of disagreeableness. Arnold is no different. They're eight months

into the six year relationship, right? She's, she writes him a note saying, Hey, these are all

the things I don't like about you. These are the things that you should change. This is what he

does. I gave him my note. He read it, tossed it aside and announced my departure. Boom, we were

over. No response, no conversation. Arnold was not a man of many surprises. He was clear in his

focus, firm in his decisions and egocentric at all costs. So this is the fundamental mismatch.

He's going to be rude and sensitive, machine-like, willing to not be in a relationship if you try to

change him because nothing is going to distract him. She keeps saying, Hey, let's get married.

Let's have kids, but marriage and kids is not becoming, getting to the top of my profession

and bodybuilding. So then I can then use that as a launch pad, right? He told us like, I'm just

going to run Reg Parks Blueprint. He was very open and honest with her, which is the fun, the

frustrating part about reading this book. Cause he's like, no, this is what I'm going to do.

And then she's constantly like, no, do this other thing. He's like, I just told you, I'm going to

focus like a machine, get to the top of bodybuilding. Then once I get there, I use that as a launch pad

to get into movies and build my business empire. That is what I'm doing. That is what I'm obsessed

with from the time my eyes open to the time I go to sleep. It is futile to make suggestions that

are not that to me. And so what I'm describing to you is the reputation that Arnold has now,

right? Everybody knows that. What's fascinating is he had that when he was 20. He had that when

he was 21. He had that when he was 15. And I think the best description of this is there's a book

I did a long time ago. It's a very popular with entrepreneurs. It's by this guy named Bill Walsh

who was a, maybe one of the greatest coaches of all time. I think it was like maybe episode 106

or something like that of founders. It's called the score takes care of itself. And there's a

line in there. There's a paragraph in that book. There's really a line that champions behave like

champions before they're champions. And we're seeing that with Arnold. And Bill Walsh says like,

the culture precedes positive results. It doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought

on your way to the victory stand. Champions behave like champions before they're champions.

They have a winning standard of performance before they are winners. Arnold had a winning

standard of performance before he was a winner. And the great thing about this perspective is we

have a normal person by her own. She'll repeat that over and over and I just, I'm a normal person.

I just want to have a normal life. And yet she's in this intense relationship with an absolute

maniac. And she is shocked at his level of focus and discipline. This is why I always say

that if you think about the people that you and I said in the podcast, they are much more

similar to each other than they are to like the random person on the street to the average person.

Arnold and people like him, most of the people that you and I said in the podcast,

they have a ruthless competitive drive that is terrifying to an ordinary person, terrifying.

And so Barbara sees that, I think Arnold's like, what, 22, 23, we're in the story.

They hadn't seen each other for like three months. I think he's in your art. She might have been

in Europe or he's in Europe or something. And because he's getting ready for a contest, right?

And he's got blinders on focus. So she's like, oh my God, we haven't seen each other in a

bunch of a few months. It's going to be like, we're going to get away. We're going to have this

romantic time. And she gets there and Arnold's like, no, I'm going to be working and I'm going to

be focused. Arnold had endured a labor intensive summer dedicated to the art of his body, grueling

training, weight conscious eating, restricted socializing and scientific sleeping. He stalked

through the season with impeccable discipline. The man I beheld was more competitive than boyfriend.

That she's showing up right before a competition and expecting this is so crazy to me and expecting

him to like, shut off for the weekend, right? His unenthusiastic response to a passionate weekend

caught me off guard. I tried to reassure myself that I would be Arnold's top priority after the

contest was over wrong. You're asking him not to be Arnold. And then she goes into all the

additional things that he was willing to do that his competitors were not at this. This is on the

exact same page goes back to the LBJ Maxim. If you do everything you will win. I had heard him dissect

the aspects of a bodybuilding contest. He had talked about his posing routine and that he had

taken private ballet classes to protect the flow of his to perfect the flow of his muscular poses.

He had mentioned the mind games that he would play to psych out his fellow competitors.

And this is her response to watching how he had purchased his work, hearing him speak about it.

I feared the consequences of merging with a boyfriend so addicted to discipline, goals and

a claim. And what's fascinating is that sentence is on one page on the left side of the book.

On the right page of the book goes into the environment in which he grew up. The fact that his

family had no indoor plumbing, no shower, no flushing toilet. Think about the contrast. Think

about the juxtaposition there. I'm shocked. I'm kind of a scared that this guy is so addicted to

discipline goals and a claim he grew up without running water. Now he has the ability to channel

his focus into an activity that will make him and his unborn grandchildren wealthy. And you find it

surprising. My response to this is of course he's like this. And Arnold does exactly what I think

if you're this driven monomaniacal maniac, what you should do clear communication with the people

in your life about what is important to you. He made it clear that his world was huge. And I must

learn to accept that other people in activities demanded his attention. He discussed his psyching

up before a contest, his egotistical drive for success, his compulsion to postpone alternatives

and the letdown that he felt after each one of his bodybuilding goals were met. I found him

incredibly insensitive to others. Again, there goes this fundamental mismatch. He is focused.

There's a bunch of time in the book, she's just like, hey, why don't she's a teacher? She's like,

why don't you come and like hang out with me and my teacher friends? He's like, why would I do that?

Like hanging out with you, your teacher friends is not chasing after my goals. And so therefore,

she misinterprets this as though he's insensitive. I found him incredibly insensitive to others. He

was not one to take responsibility for hurting other people's feelings. He said that other

people should toughen up. Again, I don't think that should be surprising. He grew up with a

militaristic father who felt like a loser. He talks about this in other books where, you know,

the Austrians, they went up getting, they went up losing the war, then they come back. There was

alcoholism all in his, most of the soldiers were drunk all the time. They were depressed. They felt

like losers. They went up beating on their kids, beating on their wives. He grows up with no access

to media, no access to running water. He comes to America and he finds people like, you know,

calls them, in one other book I read, calls them lazy bastards. You know, they don't know how good

they have it. So again, I don't think that response would be surprising if you put into context of

his early life. To him, life was something you directed. To me, life was something that happened.

Again, there's the fundamental mismatch. Arnold is a high agency person. The world does not happen

to high agency individuals. High agency individuals happen to the world. To him, life was something

you directed. And so you have all these other people. There's older mentors around Arnold and

Barbara. They wind up knowing both Arnold and Barbara and they're trying to explain to Barbara

how Arnold is. Here's one of them. He becomes this like burgeoning father figure in America

to Arnold. And he says he offered his interpretation about Arnold's extreme drive. His family

foundation was instrumental in setting up his intense motivation to succeed. Arnold's sensitivities

to his father's remarks left him with a, I am going to prove you wrong attitude. This negate,

this is one of my favorite lines in the book is a really, is a great way to think about Arnold.

This negative motivation pushes him to achieve the maximum potential in every activity,

which he did. He got to the highest level in bodybuilding. He became the highest paid actor

in movies. And then he gets to the highest political office that he was actually eligible for.

So that's a great way to think about this. He had negative motivation that pushed him to

achieve the maximum potential in every activity. Frank Zane was also a competitor and a friend

of theirs. And he would give his breakdown of our Arnold's extreme drive. He believed that Arnold's

self-discipline was what allowed him to accomplish his overreaching goals and that he was motivated

to succeed at any cost, which would include his relationship with Barbara. Frank Zane also studied

Carl Jung and this, I think this form of Buddhism. So he actually gives us another mental model of

Arnold as the trickster Titan. And it says, Frank would study Carl Jung's theory of archetypes.

Frank saw that Arnold fit the trickster archetype, the one who's humor, who was humorous

and perhaps merciless cunning could outsmart others. Frank also expounded upon his, what he

learned in Tibetan Buddhism, the six realms of being. Frank believed that Arnold lived in the

Titan realm, where he was a consummate leader and he was filled with passion to achieve something

better. This leader is able to master his sphere of influence to affect change. And so Barbara

saying, you know, having these conversations with people to know him, it helped give her a better

of understanding of why Arnold had such single-minded motivation. And then here's the problem. She's

not, I always say like learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing behavior. She's

like, Oh, this makes me feel better. And then she's like, Oh, I just wish that it hadn't made him so

monomaniacal. If he wasn't so monomaniacal, he wouldn't have been Arnold. And so another thing

about Arnold is he had this like superhuman levels of charisma. There's many stories in the book

where like her family at first is like, why are you dating? You know, they looked at body builders

like freaks. It was a very unusual thing to do at this point in history. And yet he was so like

unpredictable and boisterous. And he would say things that, you know, you're essentially if you

had manners, you wouldn't say like, I'm about to read you something here that just made me laugh.

But people found him enduring. So much so that like Barbara's mom decades, like 15 years after

they broke up would be inviting Arnold to like family celebrations or having lunch with him or

talking to him on the phone. And then, you know, he didn't know any better. So he would just say

outland or maybe he did know better. He just would say outlandish things. He wanted people to laugh,

even though most people would say, Hey, if you're having dinner with like your girlfriend's family

and her sister and stuff, don't accuse her of like farting and stuff, which is about to happen.

He carried his boisterous manner everywhere, even into my family's home. But he was such a novelty

that most family members became captivated by his blast of personality. Everyone in the family

soon learned that the more he poked fun at you, the more he liked you. He might ask, who farted

here now? Come on, tell me it was you, wasn't it Marianne? Marianne is Barbara's sister. Just imagine

being at the dinner table and some 240 pound Austrian bodybuilder is like, all right, who's

stinking up the place? And her mom loved it. She called him her little devil. She says,

mom's little devil managed to become the silliest, but most desired guest at each

frequent family gathering. And this is another important part, I think, of Arnold's story is

this ability to build a network of allies to get people, they were attracted to him,

and they'd want to build relationships with him. Such attention to detail marked a difference

between Arnold and all other bodybuilders. His mind was focused on his body, yet he never

lacked the vision and foresight to establish public relations with those who could profit him.

He had unlimited imagination and ambition, and he believed in strategically setting up

a firm network through written correspondence. That's another smart move. There's a line in

the documentary. I forgot who said it, but they said that Arnold was the most calculating person

that they had ever met. There's a bunch of great one liners in the book. This is just fantastic.

No one could restrain his mutinous energy. Arnold is about 24 years old at this point in

the story. More insight from his live in girlfriend. He had he possessed unfathomable

dedication. Arnold spent 364 days a year on his own terms. Arnold always felt self-confident

no matter the disparity in sophistication, income or status. Arnold awoke in the mornings

on an edgy high and left to work out his competitive nerves through barbells.

I thought about Arnold's route to power. He had fulfilled his childhood dream

to capitalize on being a unique revered winner. He had stacked on muscles quite intentionally

for the past 11 of his 26 years, and now they separated him from his rivals. Arnold evoked

not only respect, but God-like wonder. There's a bunch of things going on in this page. These are

like what I'm reading to you is not coming right after another. These are just random sentences

I feel tell entire stories about who he is. Excessively high energy, a power law type of person,

unfathomable levels of dedication and discipline, a singular focus, and then you package that with

like Steve Jobs level of charisma. Arnold evoked not only respect, but God-like wonder. To be in

his presence was to fall under the spell. This is exactly how they talked about the great leaders

in history. I've read that almost that exact same line in a bunch of biographies of Steve Jobs.

There's a line in George Lucas's biography where he meets his lifelong friend, but also at this

point it was like this kind of older mentor to him, Francis Ford Coppola. And George Lucas had

spent a lot of his early life reading a bunch of biography in history. And when he meets Coppola,

he's like, oh, so this is what these books meant. He says there's a line that we pull up real quick.

Lucas is talking about Francis Ford Coppola. Francis could sell ice to Eskimos. He has charisma

beyond logic. I can see now what kind of men the great seizures of history were. They were magnetic.

It's exactly the same description that we're reading about a young Arnold. To be in his presence

was to fall under his spell. He had that uncanny ability to connect immediately with anyone he

chose. And so that part reminded me of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was known to have undeniable charisma

and to have an intense presence. Arnold had that too. And the amazing thing is as you go

through the years and through the pages and as you turn the pages, Arnold gets older and yet he

remains remarkably consistent. He is smarter than he looks. He understands the world runs on relationships

so he cultivates them. He's constantly using the way he grew up as fuel. I love that quote by the

investor, Josh Wolff, that chips on shoulders put chips in pockets. And he's always learning.

An oppression that our friend John offered of Arnold is that Arnold's mind is like a steel trap.

Arnold had a knack for meeting unusual people. Arnold always rooted for the underdog success.

The underdog had to fight for himself just like Arnold had to fight for himself to get out of

Austria. And so even though Arnold's working in real estate, he's got a construction company

like this bricklayer company. He's working out five hours a day. He's doing a bunch of media work

for Joe Weider. He's continuing to train. He's creating his own products. He's doing seminars.

He's also constantly taking classes. He's always learning. He had steadily accrued undergraduate

credits from Santa Monica College. His vocabulary expanded by several thousand more words and he

worked to make his accent less guttural. He enrolled in an adult education program at UCLA

and took classes on philosophy and business. He acquired the bulk of his information from listening.

He admired anyone who could contribute knowledge into his mental storage tank. He was always

observant. He grew more refined every day. These sentences again are not next to each other.

This is appearing over multiple pages. He was utterly consistent in this. This is reminding

me of what Michael Jordan said in his autobiography back on episode 213. I'm not so dominant that I

can't listen to ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those that don't listen

don't survive long. At this point in the story, his father is dead. His older brother who didn't

really have a good relationship with, who ends up dying rather young. I think he was like 25 or 26

maybe from driving drunk. Arnold has been stacking one accomplishment on another. His mom comes to

America and visits him, spends time with both Barbara and Arnold. Then when he drops her back

off at the airport, this was fascinating. What do you think that she thinks of me? It still

matters to him. It's still motivating him to prove his parents wrong. It had to be incredibly

satisfying because it was obvious that she was extremely proud of who he became and what he

accomplished. Unlike his father and unlike his brother, she lived long enough to see it.

Okay. Another good idea from Arnold is the fact that he always spun everything for the positive.

He was constantly like, Barbara would run into a problem. We talked about this over and over again.

It's a famous quote from Henry Kaiser that problems are just opportunities and we're close.

I think a lot of normal people, they let themselves get down or they get upset about

something and Arnold would laugh it off. He'd be like, you have nothing to worry about. He

repeat, there's always a solution to every problem. There's always a way out. Just keep going forward.

And so when I just got to this one line, he just says, he always spun things for the positive.

I thought of two quotes that I absolutely love. One from my personal hero, Edwin Land.

He says, optimism is a moral duty. That is such a great line. Optimism is a moral duty.

That Edwin Land repeated it so much that when you read biographies of him,

he has these statements like a lot of founders, they identify a handful of principles or maxims

that they repeat over and over again. And they repeat them so frequently that, you know,

they become Jeffisms in the case of like Jeff Bezos inside Amazon. There's a bunch of these

and inside Polaroid, there was landisms and optimism is a moral duty was one of the landisms.

There's another quote that I thought of from, actually it comes from Andrew Carnegie's autobiography

when I got to this part and he says that a sunny disposition is worth more than a fortune.

Young people should know that it can be cultivated, that the mind like the body can be moved from

shade into sunshine. Let us move it then. Laugh trouble away if possible and one usually can.

And so I think this idea of like optimism, looking at the, for the bright side,

changing your mind just like you can, I love that idea of it's like, oh, I can get out

from the shade into the sunshine, I can physically move my body, I can do the same thing with my

mind. I think it's something that Edwin Land, Carnegie and Arnold all had in common.

Another smart thing that Arnold understood, he understood from the very beginning, the power

of media, whether that's magazines, when he first saw the reg park and realized, hey, this is my

blueprint, this is my escape out of Austria, something that he says in the documentary,

this is why I was thinking about this is he's like, sometimes you hear a line that you didn't

come up with, but it perfectly just like, you could have come up with it because it perfectly

describes how you feel. And so he heard this line from Ted Turner that says, early to bed,

early to rise, work like hell and advertise. And then he's like, I love that. That's exactly how,

like how I try to approach my work. And so Arnold's saying that as an older man,

but even when he was younger, he would do this. And so they called him a German pied

piper, which is hilarious. He was a German pied piper who would lead his supporters. Arnold kept

visualizing in an interior space where his leadership skills would constantly promote him

to higher levels of fame and power. In the early 70s, each new medium, mass form of like mass media,

was expanding. And Arnold was able to navigate through every medium with remarkable dexterity,

a cover story here, a documentary here, an interview after that, this importance and emphasis

on promoting your work is something he talked about when he was in his early 20s, something he

still believed in when he was in his early, in his 70s. There's a line when I got to this part of

the book that came to mind that when I was reading Anthony Bourdain's biography, where he said that

you have to promote, promote, promote or it all goes away. I think Arnold would agree with that

sentiment. And so something else that's talked about in the documentary that I think a lot of

people to know is the fact that Arnold became a millionaire in real estate, making his first

fortune in real estate actually gave him the independence to let him pick the movie roles,

because because he was so big and unusual looking at the time, they try to get him to play all these

roles. He's like, listen, I'm not, there's actually a fantastic line when he meets James Cameron to

be interested in doing the Terminator. And he's like, so tell me about like, do you want to be

an actor? He's like, no, I don't want to be an actor. I want to be a star. And so he was very

selective onto what roles that he wanted to play because that was his goal. And so for most of

their early relationship, they're just living in like the small apartment together until Arnold

starts buying these like multifamily like apartments and then just living in one. We lived in a

frugal apartment for five years. So Arnold could crew a critical mask of liquid capital.

And he's making that money because he's on salary at that for Joe for his magazines.

He has like these mail order programs that he's selling. He earns a bunch of money,

like traveling the country doing like bodybuilding exhibitions and everything else.

And so again, he winds up, he's just got his masterful building relationships.

This is in Santa Monica at the time. So he says Arnold had an uncanny knack for networking and

uncovered a wise old realtor named Olga. Together they would buy a bunch of apartments on the west

side. So they wind up buying one. And then it says we lived in the manager's front quarters.

While he rented out the rest of the units at 26 years old, he now owned income bearing real estate.

And so even though now he has he added real estate to his job, it says he maintained his rigorous

training schedule. And so they start having these fights again, because he refuses to slow

it down, he refuses to not keep taking on more projects, not keep expanding his empire.

After five years with him, I become conditioned to endure an emotionless,

increasingly self centered robot. I dreaded competing for his time. And she would describe

his behavior when he's concentrating on a goal, he would turn off his sensitivities to concentrate,

he would grow distant, and he would become unfeeling to anyone other than himself.

Arnold was never satisfied. This man was masterful in plotting the necessary actions to carry out

great feats. Through goal setting, he fulfilled almost every competitive and financial craving.

He was the most goal oriented man I have ever met. And this is a crazy line. If you erased

his motivations to succeed, he would rather die. And as the book goes on, she gets more and more

desperate because she realizes, Oh my God, he's gonna the exact same way he was with bodybuilding.

He is with business. And now he is with movies. This is never going to stop. And really, for our

purposes is like Arnold operated with the belief that he could learn everything, anything, anything

that he wanted to, if he put his mind to it and invested the time he could learn it, he immersed

himself in accept removal sessions, acting classes, and fiddling lessons. So he just actually,

for a role that he's about to play, he craved the interaction with each new expert and remembered

every tip. Arnold already recognized that he had the ability to learn any content he chose.

Now he was eager to take that same drive and learn everything he could about the movie making

world. I'm not sure. But when I got to that paragraph, maybe think of one of my favorite

quotes from Naval Ravikant, he said, the best jobs are neither decreed nor degrade. They are

creative expressions of continuous learners and free markets. Creative expressions of continuous

learners and free markets is a great description of what Arnold is doing right now. And we see

that he's learning from past examples of people that already accomplished what he's trying to do.

That's what Stephen King said, that imitation precedes creation. He kept focused on past

crossovers like Steve Reeves, Gordon Mitchell, and Reg Park. They had all forged successful

makeovers from muscles to movies. What also helped Arnold is that he held, Arnold held a PhD in

charisma. And so if you happen to pick up this book and read it, you're going to notice some

differences between what you and I have talked about so far in the book. There is a lot of sex

in the book and also her inner monologue and struggle. There's just one thing I want to pull

out because you do feel sorry for her. They're just so fundamentally mismatched yet she is

addicted to Arnold. She cannot. She tries to keep pulling herself away. She just cannot.

And so you see this inner monologue here. She's like five years and nine months time is enough

to know that this man will never marry you. He does not even believe in the kind of love that

you do. And so it's finally clicking towards the end of the relationship. Arnold needed time for

his personal expansion. Bodybuilding had only been its beginning. He now needed just as many

powers of concentration for future development. He was not motivated to merge our separate dreams.

She would ask him over and over again, why won't you marry me? Why haven't you asked me to marry

you? Please marry me. Why don't you want to get married? And what makes matters even worse is that

as their relationship is declining, he's starting this rapid ascent. And she's saying I would never

be the wife who would enjoy the delights of his career. I was just a girlfriend who supported

his ascent. I knew I was destined for relative normalcy. And as a result, she's starting to

resent him. And so she talks about the fact that their old friends, including her, are now resenting

him because they're like, why are you changing? And Jay-Z has this great line. He's like, you think

I'm doing all this work to say the same. And so I need to include this part because this is just

an aspect of human nature. If you're constantly putting your time and effort into your own personal

development and those around you are not, they're going to resent you. This is inevitable. So he

says, we of the leftover friends became annoyed watching him act as if his stardom had been a

certain fate. His increasing arrogance caused speculation among his old friends and our former

entourage. Our frequent phone calls, meaning people that are no longer, you know, in Arnold's life

or no longer on like the same path as him, traded nasty gossip. Friends reveled in stories that

placed Arnold in a shabby light. We reveled in bad mouthing Arnold. Each friend was losing him

to agents, directors, actors, managers, businessmen and politicians. However, despite our jealous

anger, each accommodated our schedules to meet for lunch or accept an invitation at a last minute

Arnold sponsored party. This is an ugly and pathetic part of human nature. I just wrote a little note

to myself, keep these people out of your life. And this continues over several pages, a mixed group

of friends would share sarcastic remarks about Arnold's rise to fame. He can't even act. He's

such a country bumpkin. We all kept slinging lines meant to degrade the man who had moved beyond our

familiar world into the stratosphere. Yes, let's tear down this idol. And so there's two things

that are amazing here. One, this is not the behavior of a friend. Like if you find yourself

talking crap about people or jealous of their success and you're not actually friends. And if

people do that to you, that's the sure sign that you should probably eliminate them from your life.

But what's so fascinating is like they've, these people knew Arnold, they saw him for year after

year after year after year to be completely committed to what he wanted to do to talk about

this. It's not like he hit it. He was very clear up front about what he was going to do. He made

it very easy for you to interface with them. And yet they still were surprised by his success

and continue to underestimate him year after year after year. And even his living girlfriend who had

the closest, the front row seat to everything that's going on is still surprised. This is many

years after they break up or maybe two or three years after. So it says, my sister Marianne, this

is the one that Arnold made fun of at the table for farting, says my sister Marianne called me.

She had read an article about an unusual coupling, Mr. Olympia and star of the pumping of pumping

iron and Joseph Kennedy's granddaughter Maria Shriver were an item. And this is Barbara's response.

Okay, I had to sit down to understand the nature of his colossal climb. He had now marked new

territory and Hyanna's point. His girlfriend laid claim to Kennedy royalty. And so this mistake,

this mistake of continually underestimating and therefore being surprised of a formidable individual

like Arnold continues as I watch this is many decades, like a decade, maybe a decade and a

half after they broke up, as I watched Arnold's film credits mount throughout the 80s, I became

stupefied over his success in Hollywood. I found it steadily strange to realize

I had known him prior to such staggering fame and wondered if I should have been smarter

or wiser in being able to predict his legendary outcome. I knew that he would become an outstanding

businessman, but this, and I think that is one of the greatest things about reading biographies

are great people. Hopefully one of the things that you're getting out of listening to this

podcast is not only can we know that we know a lot can change in one lifetime that we can turn

ourselves, we can build ourselves into formidable individuals for the benefit of our own life,

but you'll also be able to spot it and therefore not be surprised when you see it in other people

too. And so if you want to buy the book, actually I'll leave a link to this book

and the other two books. He's written two autobiographies, one when he was 30 and I think

one when he was 70. I will leave a link to all three books down below. And if you buy the book,

you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to go deeper on the lessons

that we're learning in the podcast and support the podcast at the same time, make sure you sign up

for Founders AMA. Once you sign up, you get access to a private email. I read every single

one of those emails personally. You can ask me questions and I answer those questions in AMA,

ask me anything, episodes. If that sounds interesting to you, the link is down below

and available at founderspodcast.com. That is 309 books down 1000 ago and I'll talk to you again

soon. Is this thing still on or are you still there? There's two things that I wanted to elaborate

on that I forgot to. So if you're listening to this, thanks for sticking around. The first thing

is real fast. There's two episodes of Invest Like the Best, which is one of my favorite podcasts.

I'll leave the links down below, but whatever you're listening to this on, if you just search,

make sure you in whatever podcast play you're listening to. Search for Invest Like the Best,

make sure you follow that show. Justin Mayers, he actually is a friend of mine,

actually listens to the podcast. He did an excellent episode with my friend Patrick. It is

episode 333 and it is about the US health crisis and the businesses that he's building

in this area and the way he thinks about it. I thought it was very fascinating. Text it to

probably half a dozen people with my personal recommendation and then scroll down in the feed

to two episodes before that. Listen to the episode on Rolex. Since you've stuck around to the end,

I'll give you a sneak peek. Don't tell anybody. I am now working on an episode about the founder

of Rolex. It's unbelievably difficult finding information on this guy, but he is fascinating

and he built one of the best brands ever. But that breakdown on the Invest Like the Best feed,

it's called Rolex Timeless Excellence. It is one of my favorite podcast episodes I have ever heard.

The second and last thing I wanted to talk about is I want to go deeper onto the founder's AMA feed,

the private feed that I've been working on. As of today, there's 25 separate AMA

episodes that I've made that you can listen to right now. There's a link down below

to sign up and you can also do it at founderspodcast.com. But I want to give you some previews

of some of the questions that are coming in. So first of all, one of the benefits is,

and you should jump on this now because as I add more episodes, obviously the price will increase

because the value increases. But what happens is once you sign up in the welcome email,

you get a private email. Please don't share that email. I read every single question that comes in.

So I read that personally. I don't have an assistant. I don't have anybody doing it.

That's why it's very important to obviously not share that email. And so what every episode is,

once you unlock the feed, every episode is the title is the question that was asked. So I'm going

to give you some examples of some of the questions that I've made episodes about. And so here are

some of my favorites. Who are the best strategists and why? If you had to put 100% of your net worth

in one founder-led company and you couldn't sell it for 20 years, which company would this be

and why? What are some examples and who are your favorite late developer founders,

meaning founders that started later in life, that started their first business later in life?

This might be my favorite all of all time. If you were to create a five to seven person

board of directors out of all the people you have studied, who would you choose and why?

Another example, who are your, what are five of your favorite stories of two people meeting

that changed the direction of the biography's life? That was a fascinating question as well.

I went into even more detail about this. What did you learn from having dinner with Charlie Munger?

Why do you insist on extreme levels of focus? It's another one. Who was the founder that had

the highest agency? And what are your, I'm just listening to a bunch of them. What are some of

your favorite sayings that you live by? And so if you sign up right now, you can listen to those

and all of them really immediately. You also get to ask me questions. You can, people have sent

in a bunch of questions. You're not limited to just one question. And the interesting thing is

you get to see and hear other questions by other people listening to founders. And so my goal

here is to go deeper on the lessons that we're already learning. Some of these things I'll never

bring up on the podcast because I need a question to prompt that thinking. And so founders AMA,

just like everything I do, I look at it as an investment because both you and I are looking

for ideas that make our lives and our work better. That link is down below and available

at founderspodcast.com and I'll talk to you again soon.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.