The Tim Ferriss Show: #696: Be Useful — Arnold Schwarzenegger on 7 Tools for Life, Thinking Big, Building Resilience, Processing Grief, and More

00:00:00 - 00:30:00

In this episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss interviews Arnold Schwarzenegger, who discusses his new book 'Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life' and his efforts in combating climate change, promoting healthy living, and more. Schwarzenegger shares his personal experiences, including his recovery from heart surgery and the influence of his father's teachings on his work ethic. The conversation highlights the importance of serving others, setting ambitious goals, and embracing discipline for personal growth.

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00:30:00 - 01:00:00

Arnold Schwarzenegger shares his journey from bodybuilding to becoming a successful actor in Hollywood, emphasizing the importance of thinking big and creating opportunities. He discusses the making of the film 'Twins' and how he convinced the studio to take a risk on a comedy movie. The podcast also explores the significance of selling and marketing, adapting communication styles, and dealing with grief and physical limitations as one ages.

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01:00:00 - 01:19:20

The podcast episode features Arnold Schwarzenegger discussing the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, setting goals, and giving back. He emphasizes the value of overcoming the fear of failure and recognizing the support received from others. Schwarzenegger also promotes his new book, 'Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life'. The podcast host briefly mentions a nutritional supplement that provides comprehensive nutritional support.

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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile

before my hands start shaking.

Can I ask you a personal question?

No, I would have seen it in a perfect time.

What if I could be out of this?

I'm a cybernetic organism living this year

over a metal endoskeleton.

Me, Tim, Ferris Show.

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.

This is Tim Ferris.

Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show.

It is my job to attempt to deconstruct

world-class performers of all different types.

And my guest today doesn't really need an introduction,

but I'll lead into it this way.

And I'm going to keep my preamble short.

The world's greatest bodybuilder,

the world's highest-paid movie star,

the leader of the world's sixth largest economy.

These are all the same person.

Sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke.

This is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And for those who don't know,

he is an Austrian-born bodybuilder,

actor, businessman, philanthropist,

bestselling author, and politician.

He served as the 38th governor of California.

His new book, Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life,

is out October 10th.

And his daily newsletter, that's email newsletter,

Pump Club recently passed 500,000 subscribers

and is growing quickly as a positive corner

of the internet.

Schwarzenegger has made it his mission to give back

since his time in the governor's house.

He's been working heavily to combat climate change,

antisemitism, ensure fair voting practices,

help youth work with veterans,

and inspire healthy living, among other things.

Now, if you want, in addition to all of that,

some footage of his incredible accuracy with killing flies,

his shepherding of various animals around the property,

including pigs and dogs,

you can go to my YouTube channel,

that's youtube.com slash Tim Ferriss.

You can find him on social at Schwarzenegger,

that's on Twitter, Instagram.

TikTok is at Arnold Schnitzel

on YouTube, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The website for the book is beusefulbook.com

and the newsletter is Arnold's Pump Club.com.

And without further ado,

please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation

with none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We've talked about a lot the last few times

that we've spoken, but I'd love to chat maybe

about the heart surgery and your recovery

from the heart surgery,

which I think might be perhaps an inspiring place

to start for a lot of people.

Would you mind just describing the heart surgery

and what the recovery has looked like for yourself?

Well, I think that you're referring to the most recent one,

which was 2018.

That was when I just went into a routine,

non-invasive, audit valve replacement,

where it goes through your arteries,

on your arm, neck, and then your growings

into your heart, and then they replace your valve.

And it's a standard procedure that they have now

in the last 10 years,

and you don't have to perform open heart surgeries

anymore because of it.

Just happens to be that in my case,

they had a difficult time somehow,

and they poked through the hard wall with the cable,

and so I got internal bleeding,

and they now had to perform an emergency open heart surgery.

Of course, it was not a way of any of that

because I was out.

The next thing I know is I wake up,

and I'm really happy, and this is over,

only to find out that I was having a breathing dupe

on my throat, and I couldn't talk,

and I saw three doctors in front of me,

not smiling, but kind of having a concerned look

on their face.

One said, don't try to talk because you can't.

You still have a breathing dupe in your mouth,

and we're gonna pull that out right away now,

so just stay with us.

Okay, one, two, three.

And then I was like,

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

So I was breathing heavy,

and someone ripped that breathing dupe out of my mouth,

and then the second doctor said,

we are so sorry, Arnold,

but something went wrong with the valve replacement,

and we had to perform open heart surgery.

So I digested all that,

and also that the breathing dupe was just ripped

out of my kind of throat and lungs,

so I'm still kind of not saying anything,

it's just staring at them.

And the next doctor says,

yeah, it's like 16 hours later now,

since you were first put down.

So now we are keeping you awake,

and everything hopefully will be fine.

The most important thing is now for you

to make it through the first night,

because that's usually when you can have pneumonia

and where things go south.

I'm just gotten out of an open heart surgery

where it could have cost my life,

and now they're telling me that this next night or two

is very crucial, so I don't lose my life.

So I said, what the hell is that?

What kind of a deal that I'm going to get into here?

I had to kind of connect quickly,

shift gears, and realize what has happened,

which takes you a while because you're in drugs

and you're in medication,

and you're still on the anesthesia somewhat,

and you're not with the program.

So as I slowly started getting with the program,

I had to kind of shift gears and realize

that the simplest things were impossible to do.

Couldn't go to the bathroom, I couldn't get up,

I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that,

and then slowly I started getting with the program,

started pulling out the tubes during the night,

and they started adjusting this and adjusting that,

and then eventually I was able to go and get up a little bit.

So now the doctor said,

the key thing is to walk,

because if you walk, then you exercise your lungs,

and when you exercise your lungs,

the danger of having pneumonia starts really slipping away,

and you don't have to worry about that.

But the key thing that kills you always is,

the least amount of lung activities that you have

can create this problem, and you die with pneumonia.

And so I was right away setting course for myself,

okay, I'm going to go and walk around the bed,

right away I'm going to get up,

and have someone pull along the machines,

then after I walked around the bed,

I sit down again, relax a little bit,

then I went outside to do this,

and so I got to make it outside the room,

and I started going outside the room,

and back in again, and outside the room,

back in again, and so I take doing exercises like that.

Then eventually I was walking around the nurses station,

and then eventually two days later,

I was walking down the long hallways,

over to another building and back,

which was like hundreds of yards,

so I could really build up strength

and get out of that hospital as quickly as possible.

And so after six days, rather than what they thought,

seven days, after six days, I got out of the hospital,

and I was exercising, and I was walking,

and I asked friends of mine that were working out with me

to put the pressure on me, and my family, my kids,

and everyone put the pressure on me to make me walk,

and to not let me get away with not walking,

and so that's exactly what we did.

So you've always seemingly been very good at setting goals,

having a vision, and then setting these intermediate goals.

I'd like to rewind the clock,

so I was trying to find some aspects of your life

that we haven't explored already,

and this is gonna go back to age 10.

So age 10, roughly, is it true

that you were selling ice cream at the time?

I think there are ice cream pops or some type of ice cream.

You can't believe everything you read on the internet,

but I did find that, and I'm wondering

if that was one of your first experiences

with entrepreneurship,

or at least trying to make money by selling something.

You're absolutely correct.

And it was not that I wanted to become an entrepreneur

or anything like this at that point.

What it was was just really a necessity.

I felt like I needed a training suit.

Friends of mine had training suits in the winter,

and tennis shoes, and my parents refused to buy it.

They just would give me my leather housing,

the pants that they wore day and night,

and in the winter and in the summer,

and then some high shoes, boots,

just clothes that would work all the time,

but nothing fancy, and so I wanted to have,

and I go to the soccer field,

I wanted to have a training suit.

So they said, well, you go out and make your own money,

that's fine, you can buy your own stuff,

but you're definitely not gonna get it for us

because that's not the kind of money that you have.

That's exactly what I did.

So I went downstairs to the lake,

where I grew up, where I learned how to swim,

and they asked, there was a ice cream and dessert kiosk

in front of the big restaurant, right near the lake.

So I asked them, I said, do you have anything

that I can go and put ice in it,

and then carry it back there where the people

are lying around in the middle of the grass

and the bushes and all around the lake,

that they're too lazy maybe to come to the front here

and buy the ice cream here,

and you know how it melt on the way back there,

and it's gone already.

So I said, there is some people I think,

this was maybe the entrepreneurial kind of mentality,

because I felt kind of there is maybe a need

for someone like to deliver the ice cream to those bushes

and to those different locations around the lake,

rather than have them to go,

have those people go all the way to the front

to get the ice cream.

And so I did not know,

but I thought that maybe it would be interesting

that you let's try it.

So I would just take a little box

that the guy gave me with like some kind of a container,

where you normally put water in it,

some rounds kind of a container and with a handle on it,

and he put in ice from the winter

that they, when they cut the ice in the winter

on that lake,

they used it in the restaurant below for keeping,

because there was no refrigeration yet,

keeping the drinks, the beer,

and the vegetables and everything cold.

So they had broken ice, huge amounts of broken ice

in the bottom of the restaurant.

And so the guy had in his trunk,

yeah, where the ice cream was,

this ice in it,

so he gave me a little bit for my container,

and then he put in 20 ice creams.

They were like, you know, just icicles,

so that those bars,

and he put those in there a little bit of cellophane,

little kind of paper over it.

And so I ran with those around the lake,

and I said, you know, ice cream, ice cream,

fresh ice cream, ice cream,

and then every so often someone would pop up and say,

yeah, I want some ice cream.

And then I would go over to the bush,

and there would be three guys, like there would be a girl.

So they said, give me four ice cream,

I'll give four.

So then next to a four.

So by the time I was like a hundred yards gone,

I already was out of ice cream from my pocket.

So I had to run back to the front again,

get more ice cream, and go back out again.

Then eventually I just took a hundred with me, you know,

and there was enough ice on the lease

so to keep it cold in that hot day,

was on 30, 35 degrees.

And so I sold this ice cream,

and then the end of the day,

I ended up what this guy gave me,

one shilling for each ice cream.

So I sold like 145, 150, 180 ice creams,

and somebody 180 shilling.

So that got me enough money to buy myself a training suit.

Then the next weekend that we'll go back

and I will buy myself with the money

and some tennis shoes and stuff like that.

And so this is kind of how I started to realize

that if you work your ass off,

you can really accomplish a lot of things.

That's why my book, you know, Be Useful,

I put in there, this is a main job,

that is just work your ass off.

Work your ass off.

We're definitely directly gonna segue to Be Useful,

Seven Tools for Life.

This title, Be Useful,

could you explain,

and that probably ties into similar chapters

around the story,

around earning money and working your ass off

in your younger years.

Where did this title come from, Be Useful?

It comes from a father, you know,

he would always say that.

And his whole attitude always was,

whatever you do, try to serve the people.

Try to do something good for your community

or for your family.

Don't just think about yourself.

That's why my father was so heavily

kind of against bodybuilding,

because he felt like that the word he was called,

this is self-thronung,

self-thronung,

which means you're kind of glorifying

and you're treating yourself

rather than worrying about others.

And so he just felt like he says,

instead of lifting for yourself,

why don't you go out and chop some wood?

Why don't you go and shuffle some coal?

And this way you help some older person

that has coal delivered,

shovel coal into their basement,

so they have coal in the winter

and they have wood in the winter

and you help an older person that doesn't,

it is not able to do those things anymore.

That's what you should do.

Then you get also muscles,

then you also get strong,

then you also kind of look good.

Look at these guys like Laszlo Pop.

Laszlo Pop is a boxer from Hungary.

He was the European champion in boxing.

How does he train?

He does pictures all over the place

where he's chopping wood in the forest.

I said, that's how he trains.

That's how he becomes a war boxing champion.

He doesn't just think about his boxing,

he thinks about other people too.

So that was his rap.

And so he says, you got to be useful.

You got to go and use your talent to help people.

And so that's where it kind of came from.

And it's something that was really interesting

because I think you and I,

we talked about that in the past,

that sometimes things come to you as a kid,

but then later on in life, it kind of comes back.

It's like kind of you like that six o'clock in the morning

and you want to stay in bed and you say,

wait a minute, I heard his voice from my father screaming,

be useful.

People have never accomplished anything.

No country ever was built by people sleeping in.

Austria was not built by people sleeping in.

America was not built by people sleeping in.

People struggled, people suffered,

people worked their asses off to build this country.

So you want to go not sleep in.

So then you start feeling guilty

and you just jump out of bed right away

because you hear the sounds, they come back.

And it's kind of motivational

because it really has driven me my whole life

and it has pushed me.

So this is just, you know, that's why I called the book

be useful because it's kind of an overall title.

And then within that book,

I put all the chapters in there and never think small

or work your ass off or sell, sell, sell

and all of those kind of things shift gears or whatever it is.

You know, I've put this kind of lessons together

which were very crucial lessons

that I've learned throughout my life

and throughout the various different careers,

but especially in the gym.

Most of my lessons are learned in the gym

because there's no better place than to learn in the gym

because this is where, you know, the rubber hits the road,

right? I mean, this is where if you don't do the force reps

and if you don't work until it burns and until it hurts

and then you go beyond that and do the force reps,

you're not going to grow.

So now you get this message

that only through pain you can actually grow.

Only through pain you can go in discomfort and misery

and you can kind of grow also as a person,

not just physically, not just muscle wise,

but as a person through comfort, no one ever grows.

You know, if your only care can grow through comfort

and to go into things where you have to have discipline

and where you struggle.

If it's in the military, if it is in a real good job

or if it is studying in the university,

the more those kids struggle and study all night

and goes through hardship, the further they're going to go.

Look at the students that goes through medical college.

They're coming in night, they sleep those nights

they have in order.

So this is what it takes.

How did your father say, be useful in German?

What is the way to say that properly?

Or how would he say to you?

Well, he would have different versions of it.

He would just say, a hard-working.

Right.

In the work hard.

Help others.

Help others.

You know, it was always like, you know, help others.

You know, don't just get interested in yourself.

So it was kind of like a combination of all of those things

that he was through together.

And he would just always, you know, kind of like,

be very critical of people that didn't do that.

My father's job was a police officer.

He was with the Chendamari, which was the country police.

It was all about protecting people

and keeping law and order.

So that's serving the people.

And the same is when you talk about music.

Music is to entertain people.

So his whole thing about learning to play music

and to play six instruments, the trumpet, the flute one,

the saxophone, the clarinet,

all of those different, you know, instruments,

it made him a great performer.

He wrote music.

He conducted music.

So it was all about what can you do for other people?

So he would go to the city park out there

and he would have concerts.

He would play concerts.

He would play in funerals, a police officer died.

He would always play at the funerals

and direct the music, conduct the music and all that stuff.

So he was always interested in serving the people.

And so he was really into that.

Arnold, when I think about you,

the adjective that comes to mind,

I was asking myself this question earlier today,

that the adjective that comes to mind for me is resilient.

And many people have seen the Netflix mini series, Arnold.

And one of the lines, and I'm not gonna get this perfectly

right, that stuck out to me was that your upbringing made you

but broke your brother.

And I'm probably getting the phrasing off a little bit,

but I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on that

and speak to what the upbringing was like.

And then also what made you different

from your brother in that respect?

My brother was a nature more fragile.

And I never really realized that when I kind of grew up,

but it is the very fact that certain things

that kind of unfolded made me then realize that.

And there was two things.

One of them was that he was more fragile.

And the other one was that he appeared to be more fragile.

And then I appeared to be stronger.

And the reason I'm saying that is because like for instance,

when he was like 11 years old and he was going to school

in Graz outside the village and he had to go with the bus

there, then they had to be picked up at the bus station

a half an hour away from our house.

And then it was night in the window in the fall.

And then he was afraid to go home.

He would say, I'm afraid to go home by myself.

And so my father would turn to me and says,

well, Arnold, can you pick him up?

I give you a shilling every night that you pick him up.

So he began the end of the week five shilling.

He said, because on Saturday, it was only half day school,

so he would go home at the time that it was still light.

So I said to him, oh yeah, yeah, I pick him up.

No problem.

He says, you're not afraid?

I said, you're kidding me now.

But in the meantime, I was also scared shitless.

So I appeared tougher than my brother,

but I was also afraid.

But I was not afraid enough not to go.

So I did go, even though I was afraid.

My brother refused to go because he was afraid.

So there was both, that I wasn't a little tougher than him,

but that I also pretended to be tougher than him.

So that kind of unfolded as time went on.

So as we were punished and beaten and all of this kind of things

that was going on, it was clear that my brother couldn't quite

handle the thing because he ran away more often from home.

We're not only more often ran away because I never ran away.

And he would not appear sometimes for a week.

My father would have to look for him all over the place.

And he was scared that he could lost,

he's gone or what is going on.

So it freaked him out.

And he treated him for a while when he came back home.

He treated him for a while nicer.

And then started getting to be again too much for him.

So what happened was really when I looked back

was that each time my father punished us,

it made my brother more and more vulnerable and weaker.

And it made me stronger.

So I thrived.

My mind started gearing up too.

I'm gonna get back at him.

I'm gonna leave this house as soon as I can.

I'm gonna be out of here with the age of 18.

I'm gonna go to the military

and then I'm gonna go and get my passport.

And then I'm gonna go to Germany

and then I'm gonna go to America

and I'm gonna be out of here.

This is it.

I'm not gonna take this any longer.

And it will make me stronger

and really set a program and set a goal and a vision

of what I'm gonna do in life.

Whereas my brother crumbled.

He got weaker.

He started drinking.

He started getting involved in alcohol.

And I could see in his behavior

that he didn't behave well.

He was abusive.

And eventually he died

because of a car accident drunk driving.

With the age of, he was I think 24 and I was 23

when it happened.

I was already in America at that time.

But it was like, it was really sad

because I could see that he just couldn't handle

any more the punishment.

And I could.

I was thriving on it.

And I used it to my big plus

and as a support system.

And it was like, gave me the motivation.

It created the fire and the belly.

It made me create a vision, a necessary vision.

This is what I want to do.

I want to get to America.

I have to become a bodybuilding champion.

I have to get away from home.

I had to find my new father figure.

My father was great to be the father, the official father

but there were others.

The trainer and the weightlifting club could banor.

And Mui, there was a guy that could now

that we also know that was in his 40s and 50s

that became a father figure, very smart guy

that spoke English and was very worldly.

And then there was a Jewish fellow there

that became our kind of mentor

and helped us with the weightlifting club.

So this all became kind of my new father figures in the way.

And then eventually Joe Widow and I came to America.

And all of these people I looked up right away as an idol

because they would treat me in a better way.

And they will educate me and they will really usher me along

and nurture me along.

But I never really resented my father because of it.

I always kind of felt that he served

a really extraordinary purpose for me,

not for my brother but for me,

which means to get me to America, become a great champion,

to have that will, be able to work no matter how many hours

it takes to do no matter what it takes

and to not shy away from misery or from pain

or from obstacles or from falling down

and having to get up again and crawl on offer for nothing.

And that was the power and the strength my father gave me.

And so I've always kind of appreciated that

and nothing comes in the perfect package

because I knew that if he would have given me all the love

and if he would have not done none of that

and if I would have had all the money in the world,

I would have not grown up as tough.

And I would not have been able to accomplish what I did

coming to America and becoming this world bodybuilding champion

and do all the things that I was doing.

It was all because of that upbringing.

And so when I look at, for instance, my in-laws,

you know, when I see those kids,

they're very smart kids in the Kennedy family,

but I always felt kind of like they couldn't have grown up.

Like Maria or Maria's brothers or anyone around them,

they couldn't have grown up or my children

couldn't grow up with the same desire and the same hunger,

but they can get other qualities.

So that's the key thing to focus on that.

But I mean, you could never have that quality of hunger

and desire and deep inside,

kind of like being able to reach inside

no matter what it takes.

So let's talk about one of the rules, never think small.

You seem like the walking archetype of not thinking small.

You've lived multiple lifetimes compared to most people.

How would you suggest people think of never think small

or what stories come to mind

that from your life exemplify that?

Just a very beginning.

I mean, for me to go and say,

I want to compete in the Junior Mr. Europe competition

rather than just in the Mr. Austria competition,

I trained just as hard as everyone else in the gym.

Their goal was just smaller.

They said, I want to be Mr. Austria.

And I said, I want to be Mr. Europe.

So I'm going to start with Mr. Junior,

Junior Mr. Europe, the best built man of Europe.

I'm going to go to this competition.

And I was thinking bigger.

And I was training as hard as they were.

Everything was the same.

But then when I won that competition

because I had a very clear vision,

that's what I want to win.

That immediately launched me into getting a job,

become a trainer in Munich in a bodybuilding gymnasium.

Now imagine how in heaven is that?

You're a young bodybuilder, you're 18 years old.

You just won your first international competition.

You win some local competitions in Austria.

You win some powerlifting competitions,

some weightlifting competitions.

But now you're Junior Mr. Europe.

And you have this trophy.

And now you're getting a job to train

in the second biggest gym in Munich.

So that was like absolute heaven.

So with 19, I started training,

become the trainer in the gym.

So now I had the opportunity to train day and night.

Even I wake up because I was sleeping in the gym.

I was waking up and I was training.

I was taking a nap in the afternoon.

I was training before going to sleep at night after dinner.

I was training day and night.

So this is a dream.

But it was all because I thought big.

They were still stuck working for some bath house

in Austria or for the government,

or being a trash collector,

or being a teacher or something like that.

They were still stuck in the same job.

I was already moving on to Munich

and I was already a trainer in a bodybuilding gymnasium,

making this the launch pad to America,

which was my ultimate dream.

So this is what I'm saying.

So it didn't take more work to think big.

It's just thinking big makes you bigger.

And what my point is is it takes just as much effort.

And I learned again from bodybuilding,

from that kind of thing I learned that don't hold back.

So when I went within age of 19,

I was the youngest Mr. Universe competitor.

I competed in the Mr. Universe contest.

I placed second, I placed runner up,

so that a year later, I went back with the age of 20

in one Mr. Universe, the youngest Mr. Universe ever.

But this is all because I was thinking big.

I was not saying, oh, maybe in a few years from now,

I go there or I shouldn't go there right now,

or something, or it's too early or this.

And then that's just something right away.

I'm gonna go for the second Mr. Universe next year.

I'm gonna go to America.

I'm gonna go and make Joe Weeder aware of me

and make sure that they win another competition in yours.

So I was driven bigger and bigger and bigger.

And even when I got into acting,

I didn't look at it as kind of like,

I'm gonna get some character roles.

I wasn't interested in character roles.

I wanted to be another Steve Reeves or Reg Bark.

They were the stars of the Hercules movies.

Clean Eastwood was the star.

We always cleaned Eastwood in their fistful of dollars.

Clean Eastwood in a dollar, a few dollars more.

Clean Eastwood in this movie.

Whatever it was, it was like, that's what I wanted.

Charles Bronson.

I wanna be like Charles Bronson.

I wanna be like Warren Beatty.

I wanna be like these guys, they were the top stars.

And that's what I saw myself.

And they said, well, this ladder is very hard to build

or to climb up to.

I said, well, then I built my own ladder.

I built my own ladder.

And then I know exactly how to get up there.

That's exactly what I did.

I created my own way of getting up there.

I took five hours that I learned in bodybuilding.

I did five hours every day of working my ass off,

to train and to train and to train and to pose and to pose.

And to do all the stuff that I needed to do.

I said, I'm gonna do the same five hours,

but I'm gonna go and learn English.

I'm gonna learn acting, speech lessons, voice lessons,

accent removal lessons.

Well, I should get my money back for those.

But in any case, I took all of those lessons

one hour every day.

And I was grinding it out.

And then I remember eventually it happened.

People started hiring me.

And the great thing was that I felt

that I should not be financially vulnerable.

So I'd first got into real estate

and I worked my ass off in real estate.

My first million actually made in real estate

before I really got into acting.

And that helped me because now when they came to me

with stupid parts and says, do you want to play a bouncer?

I said, fuck no, but when I play a bouncer,

they say, well, what about a Nazi officer?

You have a great, if the German accent,

they say, no, I don't want to be a Nazi officer.

I say, I want to be a star.

I want to be a leading man.

I want to get rich and famous.

Just looking these good men, Charles Bronson.

And they said, you're crazy.

It would never happen.

Well, I applied the other rule,

which is don't listen to the naysayers.

So I worked my ass off.

I did exactly what I did in the bodybuilding.

I did in the movies.

Eventually it happened.

I started doing the Jane Mansfield story.

I started doing it with Kirk Douglas

and Anne Margaret, the villain.

I was doing Streets of San Francisco.

I was doing Stay Hungry and Pumping On,

or in the 70s, and even with Lucille Ball,

doing Happy Anniversary and Goodbye.

So I did all of those kind of things.

And then that led to the big roar.

And now I've arrived, starring roar in Conan the Barbarian.

You know, when John Milius saw me,

he says, if we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger,

we would have had to build one.

So all of a sudden, the body that everyone said

would ever, ever become famous in the movies

because the movies, no one is seeing muscle movies anymore,

all of the opposite came true.

My accent became very welcome.

When they did Terminator, they loved the German accent.

They were Jim Cameron called.

Schwarzenegger's talking like a machine.

That's why it broke the Terminator.

So things like that.

So all of a sudden, the things that they said

would never make it in Hollywood.

The accent, the name, the body,

all of those things became big pluses and it made it.

So that's my own ladder that I built.

That's why it's important.

You know, don't just worry about climbing a ladder

that someone else has built.

No, build your own ladder.

You know, just don't wait for anyone else.

So that's what I did.

I want to underscore a few things for folks.

Number one, the building of the ladder was not,

many ladders was not haphazard.

It was systematic.

So you had the real estate as a financial buffer,

which gave you then the ability to pick your shots.

And you've been very good at doubling down

on betting on yourself in many different areas.

But could you speak to twins and what that looked like

with that particular film to bet on yourself?

Well, twins was kind of like a little bit out of nowhere

because I had certain goals,

but comedy was not one of my goals when I got into movies.

And I felt like I can be funny in the movies,

you know, in Conan, there were funny moments

and all that stuff.

But only when I started doing one action movie

after the next, you know, my hunger,

you know, the whole philosophy of staying hungry

kind of came out a little bit.

And I said, well, I wonder if we ever could sell

the idea of me doing a comedy.

And then all of a sudden I started getting obsessed

with the idea.

And I started talking to everyone.

I said, have you ever thought about me doing a comedy?

And of course, every studio executive said,

are you crazy on art?

I mean, what do you think?

I'm making millions of dollars.

If you're being an action hero,

you finally build the up to be

that this international action hero,

not only in America, but all over the world.

Why would I go and start spending money

on something else that is not sure?

I love the action movies.

We're gonna give you all the scripts for action movies.

And so I said, yeah, but I understand.

But what about me doing an action movie for you?

And then the next one we do is a comedy.

No, why would I do that?

You tell me.

I mean, would you do it?

I said, yeah.

I said, but here's the thing what we need to do.

So then when we finally formed the partnership,

Danny DeVito, Ivan Reitman and myself,

we got together and I said, you know,

I can sympathize with the studio.

Why would they take the risk?

For what?

Why don't we all take a risk?

Why don't we go to them and say,

instead of us getting the big salaries,

why don't we just say we do the movie for nothing?

Just give us a back end.

You don't have to pay us any salary whatsoever.

If the production costs 16 and a half million dollars,

that's all you use.

Not one penny more for us.

Fuck us.

Don't worry about us at all.

We have plenty of money.

And if the movie goes in the toilet,

we all go in the toilet.

Everyone takes the risks.

Not just you, the studio, wouldn't be fair, would it?

They said, hey, this is my thinking.

So what do you want in return?

We said, all we want is just, you give us three,

37 and a half percent of ownership of the movie.

And then we all go to the bank together.

If the movie goes through the roof, we all make money.

The movie goes in the toilet, none of us make money.

They said, we are in.

That's exactly what we did, and it happened to be

with Ivan Reitman's genius directing,

and with Danny DeVito kind of great, great acting,

and everyone else around us,

like Kelly Preston and everyone else,

and me being involved, we made the movie a huge hit.

As a matter of fact, that movie made more money

than any action movie made up until that point for me.

So my action movies went over to like $70, $80 million,

and that movie made $128 million domestically

and worldwide $250 million.

So now imagine the budget being $16 and a half million,

and your box office is $250 million.

So now we own 37 and a half, almost 40% of that chunk.

So we all cleaned house.

It was so fucking funny to go around.

As a matter of fact, Tom Pollack,

who was a fantastic studio leader,

great producer and lawyer,

he after the deal, he just basically said,

he went around the desk in his office

and he bent over and put out his pockets,

and he says, you guys fucked me and robbed me blind.

And so it was like, we were all were laughing

because we all were very good friends.

I mean, he was right.

I mean, it like, it really because they were so worried

about the risk-taking that we say,

we take the risk and sure enough, we did.

And the risk paid off.

And so we just really cleaned the house.

So I made like, I think $70 million on twins

or something like that on the end.

And Danny made a forge that he bought two houses

and built two houses.

So we all got kind of a lot of money and Ivan Reibman.

And he said, there's what deals that we did then

in the future with kindergarten cop, we did it,

with junior, we did it.

So it became a model that no one is gonna do

the day anymore.

The studio's got smarter than that.

But anyways, it was like historic kind of a deal.

But I had the confidence that I could pull it off

and Ivan had the confidence and Danny had the confidence.

And so together we all did it.

And Universal Studio then had the confidence

and they promoted it really well.

We hired any Liberwits to do the photo shoot.

And she took us on top of a bus against the blue sky

and just photographed Danny and me leaning against each other.

And that became the poster.

And it was like really genius.

So everyone kind of worked together

to make this a brilliant movie and a success for movie.

Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors

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Why have an entire chapter slash rule

dedicated to sell, sell, sell?

Because for a lot of people,

they think of selling as a dirty thing.

I don't happen to think of it that way.

But why is this so critical

that sell, sell, sell would be

one of the primary sections in the book?

You can imagine the reason why I called it sell, sell, sell

is because it does raise eyebrows.

Yeah.

Right?

It does make people say, wait a minute.

Selling normally is a no-no.

I mean, if you think about it,

most of the actors in the 70s and 80s

refused to sell their movies.

They said, this is not my job.

I'm an artist.

I don't sell.

I'm not a salesman out there and all this stuff.

And I, this was my strength

because I started selling when I was in career education.

I started to be a salesman.

And so I realized then the importance of selling

that no matter what you have, if you have a podcast,

if you have a movie, if you have a painting,

if you have a car, a technology, a medicine, whatever it is,

if people don't know about it, you have nothing.

The more people that know about your product

or about your talent, the more you can go and be successful.

So therefore, this idea of selling, publicizing,

marketing, communicating, convincing,

all of those kind of things is an art.

And there's art agencies that make millions and millions

of dollars to speak out what the language should be

in order to really sell to the right people

and if the right customers and sell a product the right way.

So it's an art to do that.

And I've learned that way back when I was 15 years old

and I learned how to sell.

I remember when my boss said to me,

now look at, watch me carefully when I sell,

this is a couple coming in.

So this couple comes in, I worked in a store

that had wood products and it was like a lumber yard.

They had kind of hardware store.

It was kind of like a hardware store type of a thing.

So this couple comes in, they wanted to have tiles.

And so immediately the guys started talking,

my boss started talking to the guy and said,

what kind of tiles do you want?

Do you want the black tiles or pink tiles or white tiles?

And the guy said, this is, well, I don't know.

So the woman said, we want white tiles.

And for the bathroom, we want to have pink tiles.

And so the guy looked at her and says, okay, fine,

let me take you over there.

He said, how much tiles do you need?

Again, the man didn't answer and the woman answered.

And she says, oh, I need seven to me.

I've written down the measurements here.

I need two meters by a meter 80 tall and blah, blah, blah.

And so the guy then all of a sudden realized

that she's the customer.

So he started really paying attention to her

asking all the questions and thinking around,

but included him also.

And then on the end, when they were satisfied

and we wrote up the order and we then told him

that they will be all delivered on Thursday,

he came to me after they left.

They said, so what did you learn?

I said, well, I said, did you really sold the tiles?

Well, and the colors and the difference between real tiles

and fake tiles and all this.

He says, none of it was one other thing.

I switched who I thought was the customer.

He says, she was the customer, not him.

He paid for it, but she was the customer.

So I had to talk and address her

because that was the important thing.

She needed to be convinced.

So I had to sell to her.

And so I realized then that selling is an art,

that you have to improvise in the just all the time.

That if you go in front of a children audience,

for instance, you have to speak a totally different language

when they're talking to class in the school

and after school programs.

Then I talk in Washington when I talk to legislators.

I have to talk to differently.

When I talk to a crowd of fans at the movie theater,

then I talk to a bunch of lobbyists.

So it's always different.

So you have to learn the art of selling.

And this is why selling is so important.

And I remember that when Andy Warhol,

when I was being painted in his warehouse down in Soho,

and Jamie Wires was there and Andy Warhol was there.

And then he always talked about

that the most important thing is

that you don't just sell the art, but you sell yourself.

You have to sell yourself.

You have to become an interesting person.

With both parties, you go to who you hang out with,

the photos that you take, the recordings that you make,

the magazine that you publish.

And all of this together, it makes me a character

and makes people fascinated to write about me

and therefore they write about my art.

And sure enough, it worked

because in no time Andy Warhol's art

became worth millions and millions of dollars.

I used to buy it for $50,000, $30,000.

I have the big Indian that is hanging in my office

that is now 10, $50 million, about for $30,000.

So imagine the value that Andy Warhol gained

by being just a character, a different character

and being just strange with a wig on it

and the glasses and all of these different things.

He ran around with the little tape recorder

and he by the way was a great promoter of mine.

What is the significance of shifting gears?

I mean, people can think of it, of course,

in an automotive capacity, but shift gears,

what does that mean to you?

Are there any particular stories that stand out?

I talked about it earlier.

You wake up from a surgery that you think is two hours,

they replace your heart valve

and then someone tells you, we poked through your hard wall

and you now have been out for 16 hours

and now you have to stay here seven days.

You're not out of the woods yet.

We have to do everything we can to keep you alive

and you almost died on the operating table

and it could still happen next night

if you don't really get going with the walking

and if you get pneumonia.

So that you have to shift gears very quickly.

I usually call it the art of improvisation.

You know that you have to be very good in improvising

because there's a lot of things that come up to you in life

where you have to be really good in improvising.

And this happened to me all the time when I was governor

I had to quickly shift gears.

It happened also in show business

where you have to shift gears,

but it's the unexpected is happening

and you have to be kind of like ready for that

and confront that.

I mean, that's the most important thing.

It's just so many people get stuck

on certain things and the track

and they then cannot get off that track.

I just always felt like I was very good in shifting gears,

like going from bodybuilding to show business.

I mean, you really had to shift gears

because always in certain other things became important.

I mean, think about it, you go and you do bodybuilding.

Every athlete always tells you

that you got to go and keep the motions out of the way

because it's the emotions that gonna kill you.

The guy cannot go train and compete

and train for a competition for a world championship

or the Olympic Games or whatever it is

and be emotionally involved in whatever it is

because he can derail you.

So you do that and that become a master in that.

I became like a quarter stone,

but then all of a sudden you go

and you start taking acting classes

and you start hearing from the acting teacher, Arnold,

you talk like a fucking cold fish.

I mean, there's no emotions there.

I got to go and find your emotions.

So think about that for a second,

all your life long you're here now,

that this is like bad and now all of a sudden you're here,

you have to be more emotional.

You have to be in touch with your emotions.

Have you thought about lately the smell of a rose?

I said the smell of what?

A rose, a rose smells a certain way,

it's a beautiful smell.

I said, what does this have to do with acting?

He says, ah, he says, if you sit there in a scene

and you start thinking about that smell of a rose,

you have a totally different facial expression

in close the eyes, you know,

let's assume that you want to compliment the woman,

the perfume she wears.

You can go and say, I like your perfume.

Stupid.

But if you go and say, ah, what are you wearing?

Ah, it smells wonderful.

I mean, you have good taste.

He says, that's a totally different tone.

He says, it would change your voice.

If you smell the rose, it would change your voice.

But you only can do that if you really smell it

and be in touch with that.

So that's what I'm talking about shifting gears very quickly.

So from one year to the next,

I had to kind of always said,

have all the emotions kick in

and make everything work that didn't really work in the past.

I'm curious to ask you about how that

re-accessing of emotion maybe has informed

how you experience grief yourself.

Since we last spoke, you lost Franco, Franco Colombo.

And I'm just wondering what that grief was like

for you to experience.

I have to say, I react a little bit differently

to those kind of things than everyone else

because to me, it's not so much the shock

as it is the ongoing missing a person

because there's certain friends that have become part of you.

And so if they pass away and they die,

something dies in you.

And so when I imagine every day

when I walk in the living room

and I see this chessboard where Franco and I played chess

in the last 10 years, two, three times a week

and drank wine, smoked a stogie and just talked.

In the talk, like 65 and 70-year-olds talk

rather than the way 20-year-olds talk

and not like in the old days.

And because Franco I've known since I was 18 years old.

So then our conversations were differently

than they were as of the last 10 years.

Where we talk about kids, where we talk about family,

where we talk about where we grew up and about the past,

any more kind of like deeper conversations

and more emotional conversations.

And now we're sitting here every day

when you walk in your living room,

you see this chess table down the corner

and Franco is not sitting there anymore.

And that to me, you know, is heartbreaking.

And when I go to the gym and I drive down with the bicycle

and Franco came on the bicycle,

he was not good in bicycle riding.

He was all over the place.

So that was funny.

And I had people sometimes videotape him, you know,

just to show how goofy he looks on a bicycle.

I think the bike seat was maybe too high up

or we couldn't help it, whatever the problem was.

He was just hilarious because he was in a five-three

according to him.

I think he was five-one or five-two the most.

But then he always said five-three.

And then working out with him,

the fun of working out with him.

Then I had him in so many movies.

I remember when I directed the movie,

The Switch for Tales of the Crypt.

I had him in Conan the Barbarian, I had him in there.

In Terminator, I had him in there.

I had him in all those movies in there.

So he was just, he became, you know, kind of part of me.

So to me, it's not just the initial shock

when someone tells you,

oh, Franco just passed away on the beach in Sardinia.

It is also then a daily thing, a weekly thing.

Every time I go to the Arnold Classic

and we hand out, I have a trophy

that is the Franco-Colombo posing trophy

or most muscular man trophy.

And we hand those out and we, Franco's party on it

that I got made by a really great Italian sculptor,

the double bicep pose.

And the double bicep pose intentionally

because Franco was really not never known for his biceps.

Because he was known here.

So his head's such overpowering back, his lats,

his chest, his deltoids.

It was so overpowering

that people sometimes didn't even see the arms.

So I on purpose wanted to do a double bicep pose.

So in the future, people also remember him for his biceps.

But it's just a great, great sculpture.

So to me, Franco will live on forever.

So he's Joe Wieter, you know, on Ben Wieter

and Dave Draper and Sergio Liver and Bill Pearl

and Rich Park.

To me, I see them all sitting in front of me

when there's the Arnold Classic.

And I see them all sitting there laughing

and having a great time and watching Arnold Classic

and watching how bodybuilding is progressing,

how the cash prices are going up,

how we have bigger and bigger sponsors,

how we have a bigger and bigger convention and expo

and all of this, how they enjoy all that.

So that's what I see out there now.

But it's kind of like, you know,

it's in between kind of like, should I have tears in my eyes

when I'm out there and looking at all those faces

of those bodybuilding champions

and promoters of bodybuilding or should I smile?

You know, that's this combination.

I would love to get your thoughts on aging

and relating to aging because a lot of people struggle

with relating or thinking about aging.

I for the first time in the last nine months

have had chronic pain for the first time

due to a spinal issue,

which is the first time in my life I've ever experienced that.

And I'm wondering if you could share anything

about what you've learned or decided with respect to aging,

just getting older as we all do.

You know, the first time at all I experienced something

similar to that is when I had my open heart surgery.

I was not even 50 years old.

I was, it was in April and in July I'm 50.

So it was just a few months before I was 50.

And it was the first time where I woke up

after two heart surgeries.

The first one didn't work,

so they did the second one within 48 hours.

And after that I felt like I was damaged goods.

I didn't feel any more like invincible.

You know, I didn't feel like I can handle anything.

All of a sudden there were limits put on me

where the doctors say, don't train as heavy.

You know, every time you force your reps,

you put pressure on your valve unnecessarily.

We have to replace those valves again

in maybe 10, 15 years from now.

So the more you put pressure on it,

the faster we will have to, it's like a tire,

the 30,000 miles the tire,

you can use it up in one year,

you can use it up in 20 years.

So it's up to you, you know, so it's that kind of a thing.

So it was the first time where I started thinking

about when I did stunts,

I remembered that right after that

was a stunt in end of days,

where the woman that was possessed by the devil

takes the piano and runs it against my chest,

wanted to kill me.

So, and normally you can run a piano into my chest,

doesn't make any fucking difference, I don't care, right?

But because of the heart surgery

and having been now cut open in the chest,

I did not know how vulnerable that rib cage is.

So I told them to measure out the distance with a rope

and then the rope comes to an end

and it stops an eighth or a quarter of an inch

before my chest.

So it looks still like it's smashing for in

and I still sell it,

but it's like you start planning on your vulnerability.

And this then continues on

because all of a sudden, you know,

you used to kind of hop upstairs

and hop downstairs in a squatting position

to just get out of breath.

So then when you start a scene, you're exhausted,

you know, like you're cutting in

in the middle of a fight scene,

so that you're,

ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,

and you have to be big breath.

So all of a sudden you start jumping up and down

and your knees start hurting.

So now you realize, okay, between 50 and 60,

it's the knee punishment.

So I have to watch my knees.

Then after you're 70,

you said for the first time saying, you know,

I noticed myself walking less.

Why am I walking less?

I used to love hiking for five hours up the steep mountain

and all of this I love, why am I walking less?

Then I realized that I got back pain.

When I walked a long time,

I started getting cramps in my back.

So I started walking less.

So I started doing stretching exercises for the back.

And so things like that start creeping up.

Then you have to start kind of really be disciplined

and say, okay, I still have to walk since many miles a day,

too many steps a day and blah, blah, blah.

But now you have to make yourself

what came normally natural.

So you get kind of like one thing after the next,

then you have shoulder surgeries on both shoulders.

Then like yesterday, I had elbow surgery

because my nerve had to be kind of relocated

because where the nerve was,

it created pressure on my nerve.

And therefore my little fingers started getting numb.

So now that comes in, that's in the late 70s.

It's always said, there's a bit of nerves

and someone talks to you about the neuropathy

about your legs and feet.

And this is how it just creeps up on you, all this stuff.

And the interesting thing is it's like,

weightlifting, it doesn't matter how old you are

or how young you are.

It doesn't matter how rich you are.

It doesn't matter what color you are.

It doesn't matter from where you're from.

200 pounds is 200 pounds.

It's the same fucking thing for everybody.

And the same is also you get older.

It makes no fucking difference who you are.

You can be the biggest fucking celebrity in the world,

but you still get your back pain.

You still get your hip pain.

You still get your shoulder pain.

You still get your elbow pain.

You still get numb fingers.

You still have to watch your heart.

You still have to watch the diet.

You still get fat if you don't watch the diet.

We eat three times a day a full meal.

You get fat if you cut one meal out.

All of this kind of stuff you have to start doing.

So it's just that simple.

And this is all kind of so that we stay alive longer

and that we kind of like,

because we all are, the time you're born,

your time cut is set.

It's set.

The only thing that changes it is you, right?

So let's assume I'm set for 85.

So I can decide, do I want to go to 90?

Yeah, I can do that, but then I have to live really healthy.

Someone else is set for 90, you can live to 100,

but you can stretch it a little bit.

And you can also fuck it up big time.

You can be set for 85 and you wipe up with 70.

You know, my dad wiped out with 66.

He was in pension for one year and then he wiped out.

He died because of too much smoking and alcohol

and all of those things.

So he cut himself short.

He maybe was meant to be 80,

but he definitely wiped out with the 66.

So my mother, you know, she died with 76,

or she did it herself because I mean,

she had a continental heart disease,

which is what I have, which is the valve,

but she had the choice to get surgery or not.

She says, no, if God wants me, he should have me.

And so she resisted any surgery.

There's some people when you watch the shows in Sardinia,

they've lived to 100 because they have no problems

for they sleep in the afternoon, they take their naps,

they eat well, they walk around for miles and miles

every day, they still walk and work.

The women are still in the kitchen with the age of 90,

making food for the whole family and all this stuff.

So they push it.

They push the envelope beyond of what they were meant for.

So this is the way we can do it.

But I mean, I think there is a reason

when you get to a certain age to be concerned about it.

I don't know if it's the age that you are now,

because you're still a young punk.

I can hope.

For your whole life, you could be my grandson.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

So you have been an athlete as it was laid out

in the three chapters in the miniseries,

athlete, actor, American, right?

You've had this arc.

How do you think of your self now?

What is your identity now?

And how do you hope to use the time that you have left?

Because of course you have this book,

Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life.

You have the newsletter, which has done very well.

You have more than half a million people for Pump Club.

You have the Pump app.

How do you think of yourself now?

And what do you want to focus on in the next 10 years,

if you have, let's say, 10 years left, something like that?

Well, I don't really think of myself now,

any different than I thought of myself when I was governor,

when I thought of myself as an actor, as a bodybuilder.

You know, I'm very rarely in the moment

of where I just appreciate what I'm doing right now,

because I always think about the future.

You know, I don't like the past.

I appreciate the presence, but I really live for the future.

I always just live about where I want to go.

There's a lot of things I want to accomplish environmentally.

There's a lot of things that I want to accomplish

when it comes to public policy.

There's a lot of things I want to accomplish in show business.

There's a lot of things that I want to accomplish

in the promotion of health and fitness and bodybuilding.

So all of those different worlds,

I hopefully can manage to combine them

and create a certain synergy.

So in order that one can help from the other,

so the bodybuilding can help from the show business,

my success in show business,

that the show business can get helped

with the success of the fitness movement,

then my newsletter that I have,

which is going through the roof right now, the pump club,

all of that is kind of like playing into this whole thing.

I'm very happy that all of a sudden,

now it's kind of like an unexpected new era for me,

which is the era of motivational speeches,

the era of motivational books,

the era of motivational newsletters.

I mean, not in my wildest dreams

did I ever think about that I want to create

a positive corner on the internet.

And it was only because there was so much negativity out there.

I started thinking about, well, maybe I should say

some nice things and some positive things

and it became a huge hit beyond my expectation.

And so I now I do speeches every so often

if it's the Ukrainian war, the Russian war in Ukraine,

or if it's the insurrection or if it is prejudice

or whatever the issues are, I tackle those.

So as I said to you earlier,

I'm the guy that climbs out Mount Everest

and sees another bunch of peaks.

And therefore I say, oh my God,

I didn't even know they were there and I climbed them.

And so that's what I do.

It's just a continuous climb, nothing changes.

I've climbed to 20, I'm climbing now.

What do you hope the impact of be useful will be?

What would you hope people to gain from it or use it for?

Everyone will use it for something else.

I think that the whole thing is about helping people

live a better life and be able to fulfill their dreams,

whatever those dreams are.

You know, it's just simple things like,

don't listen to the naysayers or create a vision.

And I know that because I asked my kids

when they were like 18, 19 years old,

what do you want to do?

Why do you want to go to college?

They couldn't answer me.

Well, I could answer that question when I was 18, 19.

You know, so I'm concerned about that

because they said to me,

so they're looking too much in the computer,

too much on the iPhone and on the iPad,

and they get ideas from someone else.

But this is their ideas, but not their ideas,

but my kids' ideas.

They need to be by themselves,

and sit in the jacuzzi or sit somewhere in the mountain

or out there by themselves and start thinking.

Let the dreams come into your mind.

Let your deep inside come out and give yourself time.

Don't always look at the machine.

And so I'm trying to tell people,

there's a simple rules that I talk about in the book

where you kind of learn, you know,

that here's how I create a goal.

Because without a goal, without a vision,

you have nothing.

Where are you going to go?

You know, it's like you have an airplane pilot

that doesn't know where to fly,

and here's the best airplane.

You can fly around, around, around,

and then eventually you crash.

That's what happens to you in your life.

You crash.

You're not going to go anywhere.

So you need to have a direction.

You need to have a goal.

Why you get up in the morning?

What do you struggle towards?

What it is?

Why are you happy to go to bed at night?

Did you need some rest to get up in the next morning

and have the dinner chicken?

All of this has to have purpose.

It has to be purpose.

So this is what I try to do is

keep a little bit of this light in my book

and say to people in a casual way,

you know, have a goal.

Here's how you can do it.

This is how I did it.

You know, and then big goals.

Don't be afraid of big goals.

You know, big goals are just as easy as little courses.

You know, and by the way,

I know that every human being is afraid of failure,

but you can overcome that, you know, by accepting failure.

You know, we embody booming.

We go and do failure with our reps.

So every single day when we train,

we experience failure.

We're not afraid of it.

We go, it's like being Muhammad Ali said.

They say, hey, how many reps do you do in sit-ups?

He says, I don't start counting until it starts hurting

as they're failing.

That's when I start counting.

So, I mean, in lifting,

you can only know how much you lift if you're willing to fail.

So Michael Jordan, when he talked about his 5,000 shots

that he missed in basketball

and how many 280-some games he missed in basketball

and all of this stuff, that's what made me great.

Well, wow, that's an eye-opener.

You know, when you hear that, that's really powerful.

The greatest basketball player talks about failure

that made him great.

So people should look at that.

They should start thinking about that.

Don't start approaching everything with,

oh, I'm afraid, what is if I fail?

What is if he doesn't like it?

What if I make a fool of myself?

Well, you know, it's people are afraid of speaking,

public speaking, that's the biggest fear that people have

because they're worried that they may fail

or sound stupid and stuff like that, but they know that.

They don't get rid of all of this in a worry about failure

and he will be then free.

And I'm not saying you will be able to get rid of it completely.

You can never change 100%, but you can change someone

so that you're not as afraid anymore of failure

and that you're actually looking forward to that

and that you're saying, okay, I'm gonna go all out

and do a fail, you know, that you approach it differently

that the way you look at failure.

And look, I've always pushed myself,

what do you think when you run for governor?

I mean, it would be the highest embarrassment

if you would have lost, right?

But I took the chance.

I was not afraid of failure.

I could see my vision very clearly.

This is how I'm gonna sell to the California people

what I'm going to do for Californians.

And that's how I'm going to approach

the governorship of Galvara.

And you know, if they buy in, great.

If they don't, then they're lost.

Then they move on with something else,

but I'm not going to freeze now and say,

oh my God, what if I lose?

But then I would have never run in the first place

if I would be afraid to run, right?

So you never know how far it's gonna take you.

So I think simple rules like that,

I wanted to have those people take away those rules.

And, or for instance, giving back.

As soon as you realize that you're not a self-made man

and you realize that we all were created by your parents

and that you were created by mentors, teachers, coaches,

and many other people that none of us know,

but you yourself know.

I mean, those are the people that have created me.

I mean, it's just a loan.

If I wouldn't have had Joe Weaver

to bring me over to America,

how could I have come to America?

So how can I say I was self-made?

How could I have become governor

if not 8.5 million people voted for me?

I mean, I'm not a dictator.

I was voted in through the democratic process.

So did I make myself governor?

No.

So I'm not a self-made man.

So I have to recognize that my training, my money,

everything comes from a lot of different people.

And therefore, that means when you recognize that

that you now have the responsibility

of going out and help others.

There are so many people out there that need help.

And it's like my father-in-law said,

Sergeant Shriver, who was,

who created the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps,

and all of these great programs in the 60s.

He said to a bunch of Yale students

in the graduation class,

he said, tear down this mural that you always look at yourself.

Tear down this mural

and you will be able to look beyond that mural.

And you will see the millions of people that need your help.

That's exactly right.

As soon as we start for a minute looking at ourselves,

then you will be able to look beyond yourself.

And you see that there are people out there that need help.

There are poor people out there that need help.

There are fire victims right now

out there that need your help.

There are earthquake victims out there.

There are homeless people out there.

There are war veterans out there.

There are kids that come from poor backgrounds

that need to learn how to speak English,

how to write English, how to do math,

and all of this stuff.

There's immigrants that don't even speak English.

So there's so many areas where you can be helpful

that takes money or takes no money, just effort.

So never ever think it's all just about you.

Someone helped you where you are today.

So now you go out and help someone else.

So this is another one of my lessons.

It's just, you know, break that mural in front of you.

So these are the different lessons that I teach people

that really had a profound impact on me

and made me successful.

And then no bullshit rules

and anyone can follow it.

That's what it is.

So people can find the new book, Be Useful.

Seven Tools for Life, Anywhere, Find Books are Sold.

They can go to beusefulbook.com.

The newsletter can be found at arnoldspompcloud.com

and we'll link to all this in the show notes

at tinnedup.log.com slash podcast.

Arnold, is there anything else that you would like to say?

Any closing comments or other requests

of the audience suggestions, anything at all

that you'd like to add before we come to a close?

No, no, I just want to say to the people,

I want to thank them for having been such great supporters

of mine, you know, without them.

As I said earlier, I will be nothing.

I mean, if it wouldn't have been for the bodybuilding fans

as I grew up, they were cheering there

and screaming, Arnold, Arnold, motivated me.

I will be nothing.

If it wouldn't have been for the movie fans

that went to run, you see Conan, the librarian,

made it the number one box office

that then gave me all the headlines,

I would have been nothing.

All the Jim Camerons and the Ivan Reibmans

and all of these people and the people

that are now following my newsletter,

the pump club and all of these people

that are even interested in a book like Be Useful

and they go to my seminars and listen to my speeches,

my motivational speeches.

I just really love that I have had such

an extraordinary following and that some of my speeches

have reached like 35 and a half, six billion people.

That's really extraordinary.

So I want to say thank you without them, I will be nothing

and thank you to America for giving me everything.

Thank you, Arnold, for the time, yet again.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Tim, you did a great job.

Hey guys, this is Tim again,

just one more thing before you take off

and that is Five Bullet Friday.

Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday

that provides a little fun before the weekend?

Between one and a half and two million people subscribed

to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter

called Five Bullet Friday.

Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.

It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday

to share the coolest things I've found or discovered

or have started exploring over that week.

It's kind of like my diary of cool things.

It often includes articles I'm reading,

books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,

all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me

by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests

and these strange esoteric things end up in my field

and then I test them and then I share them with you.

So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short,

a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off

for the weekend, something to think about.

If you'd like to try it out,

just go to tim.blogs.friday, type that into your browser,

tim.blogs.friday, drop in your email

and you'll get the very next one.

Thanks for listening.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

Keywords

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful, Heart surgery, Grieving Franco Columbu, Aging, Healthy living, Fair voting practices, Communication, Selling, Film production

People

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andy Warhol, Danny DeVito, Ivan Reitman, Kelly Preston, Tom Pollack, Franco Colombo, Joe Weider, Ben Weider, Dave Draper, Steve Reeves, Reg Bark, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Tim Ferriss

Companies

Eight Sleep, Universal Studios

Organizations and Institutions

N/A

References

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Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (@schwarzenegger) is an Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor, businessman, philanthropist, bestselling author, and politician. He served as the thirty-eighth governor of California. His new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, is out October 10th, and his daily email newsletter Pump Club recently hit more than 500,000 subscribers and continues to grow as a positive corner of the Internet. 

Schwarzenegger has made it his mission to give back. Since his time in the Governor’s house, he’s been working diligently to combat climate change, anti-semitism, ensure fair voting practices, help youth, work with Veterans, and inspire healthy living.

Please enjoy!

*

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*

[06:37] Recovering from heart surgery.

[11:19] Age 10 entrepreneurship.

[15:38] Arnold's dad and the importance of being useful.

[21:02] Arnold and his brother: same upbringing, different outcomes.

[27:53] Building ladders and never thinking small.

[34:49] When Arnold's self-bet to be a comedic lead paid off.

[41:26] We're all in sales.

[46:43] The significance of shifting gears.

[50:24] Grieving Franco Columbu.

[54:53] Aging.

[1:02:17] Arnold's current state of self-identity.

[1:05:07] What Arnold hopes readers take away from Be Useful.

[1:12:18] Parting thoughts.

*

For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.

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