Arnold Schwarzenegger (Before He Was Successful)

1. 0:00 – 4:53

   Arnold's Childhood, Reg Park, and the Road to Mr. Universe

   1. DSDavid Senra0:00

      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 Meinard," 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 II 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 gonna 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 in to 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 Weider, 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.

2. 4:53 – 6:36

   The Book, Barbara, and the Mismatch of Ambitions

   1. DSDavid Senra4:53

      Okay, so that was a brief overview of Arnold's early life and an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak, and it was written by his former girlfriend, Barbara Outland Baker. So I stumbled upon this book because I was watching the new documentary on Netflix. It's a three-part series. Uh, it's called Arnold, and in one of the episodes, Barbara makes an appearance, and it mentions, like, 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. And so I didn't remember her name, but all the way back on episode 193, I read this short... It's like 115-page biography, uh, autobiography of Arnold when he was, like, 30 years old. It's called, uh, The Education of a Bodybuilder, and the book ends with Arnold dumping his girlfriend. And so I'm gonna 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 gonna be about is this is Arnold before the fame, before the success. Like, this is the person that built the foundation upon which all his future success rest upon. Okay, so main theme of the book is that Arnold is the most goal-oriented

3. 6:36 – 10:43

   Singular Focus, No Plan B, and Burning the Boats

   1. DSDavid Senra6:36

      person that Barbara had ever met, and so I wanna go right to where they meet. Arnold's 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 w- 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 excerpts from this interview that Barbara does with Arnold when he's the governor of California. This is all way back in 2004. And so he goes back in time, and he's talking about, like, "This is why I had this singular focus." There is, like, a clarity of purpose, I think, when you find one singular thing that you can focus on to the exclusion of everything else. Arnold talks about in interviews and in books and everything else, he didn't believe in plan B. He believed you picked what you wanna do, and then you burn the boats, and you, you never doubt yourself. And I think most people never experience that in life. I think a lot of people that have never experienced it actually thinks it's limiting, when I would act- uh, what I, what I would argue is actually it's the opposite. It frees you 'cause you know exactly what your mission in, is at life. And in, uh, if you watch the documentary or read any biographies of Arnold, like, your mission can change in life. At first it was bodybuilding, then it was his movie career, then it was politics. That's why that, that documentary on Netflix is a three-part series. But let's go to the fact that, hey, this is my way out. I'm gonna 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 was no television. There was no such thing as television. He didn't see his first movie till he 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 f- 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 and 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 through the book. Most of them are not a paragraph long. Most of them are a sentence or two. It's very easy to understand him. He makes it very easy for people to interface with him 'cause 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 start- how the, the quote I just read to you. Hey, she wanted, you know, a normal life. I hated that very idea. I thought it repulsive. She wanted me to... I, I'm always gonna grow, and I always wanna continue. She, she wanted a life that would not permit that. She says it multiple times in the book. Like, "Why won'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 diffi- 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 this 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 things you, that you should change." This is what he does.

4. 10:43 – 13:21

   Champions Behave Like Champions: Why Barbara Couldn't Change Him

   1. DSDavid Senra10:43

      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 gonna be rude, insensitive, 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 the, getting to the top of my profession in bodybuilding so then I can then use that as a launchpad, right? He told her. He's like, "I'm just gonna run Reg Park's blueprint." He was very open and honest with her, which is the, the fun- the, the frustrating part about reading this book 'cause he's like, "No, this is what I'm going to, 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'll use that as a launchpad 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 till 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, uh, there's a book I did a long time ago. It's, uh, very popular with entrepreneurs. It's by this guy named Bill Walsh, who was a, a- Uh, 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 s- 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 again. "I just, I'm a normal person. I just wanna 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 cite 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 cite in the podcast, they have a ruthless competitive drive that is terrifying to an ordinary person. Terrifying. And so Barbara sees that.

5. 13:21 – 17:15

   Contest Prep, Ballet Classes, and Clear Communication

   1. DSDavid Senra13:21

      I think Arnold's like, what? 22, 23, wherever we're in the story. They hadn't seen each other for like three months. I think he's in, or 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 gonna be like we're gonna get away. We're gonna have this romantic time." And she gets there and Arnold's like, "No, I'm gonna be working and I'm gonna 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 competitor than boyfriend. This is, she's, she's showing up right before a competition and expect- this is so crazy to me, and expecting him to, like, jet 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 prio- 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. And this, this is on the s- exact same page. Goes back to that 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, her response to watching how he appl- approaches his work, hearing him speak about it. I feared the consequences of merging with a boyfriend so addicted to discipline, goals, and acclaim. 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 scared that this guy's so addicted to discipline, goals, and acclaim. 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 and 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 body go- bodybuilding goals were met. I found him incredibly insensitive to others. Again, there goes this fundamental mismatch. He is focused. She-- There, there's a bunch of time in the book she's just like, "Hey, why don't..." She's a, she's a teacher. She's like, "Why don't you come and, like, hang out with me and my teacher friends?" And he's like, "Why would I do that? Like, hanging out with you, your, your teacher friends is not chasing after my goals." And so therefore she misinterprets this as, oh, he's insensitive. I found him incredibly insensitive of others. He was not one to take responsibility for hurting other people's feelings. He said that they should tou- 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 wind up getting, they wind up losing the war, then they come back. There was alcoholism all in his... All, most of the soldiers were drunk all the time. They were depressed. They felt like losers. Uh, they wind 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, in one other book I read, calls them lazy bastards. You know, they don't know how good they have it. So again, that, I don't think that's, that, that, that response would be surprising if you put it into context of his early life.

6. 17:15 – 19:52

   Negative Motivation and the Trickster Titan

   1. DSDavid Senra17:15

      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, 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. These are- 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. Uh, here's one of them. He becomes this, like, burgeoning father figure in America to, to Arnold, and he says, uh, 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 neg- This is one of my favorite lines c- in the book 'cause it 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, uh, 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, a competitor and a friend of theirs, and he would give his breakdown of Ar- 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, uh, this, I think, this form of Buddhism. So he actually gives us another mental model of Arnold as the trickster titan. And it says, uh, "Frank would study Carl Jung's theory of archetypes. Frank saw that Arnold fit the trickster archetype, the one whose humor- who was humorous and perhaps merciless cunning could outsmart others. Frank also expounded abo- upon his, what he learned in Tibetan Buddhisms, the six realms of being. Frank believed that Arnold lived in the titan realm, where he was the consummate leader, and he was filled with passion to achieve something better. This leader is able to master the, his sphere of influence to effect change." And so Barbara's saying, you know, having these conversations with people that know him, it helped give her a better understanding of why Arnold w- 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."

7. 19:52 – 24:16

   Charisma, Boisterous Humor, and Building a Network

   1. DSDavid Senra19:52

      And so another thing about Arnold is he had this, like, superhuman, uh, levels of charisma. Uh, there's m- many stories in the book where, like, her family at first was like, "Why are you dating..." You know, th- they looked at bodybuilders like freaks. It was a very unusual thing to do at this point in history. And yet he, he was so, like, uh, unpredictable and boisterous, and he would say things that, you know, y- you're, essentially if you had manners you wouldn't say, like I'm about to read, do something here that just made me laugh. But people found him enduring, so much so that, like, Barbara's mom, decades, like, uh, 15 years after they broke up, would be inviting Bar- uh, Arnold to, like, family celebrations or having lunch with him or talking to him on the phone. And, you know, he, he didn't know any better, so he would just say outlan- or maybe he did know better. He just would say outlandish things, and he wanted people to, 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, [laughs] is Barbara's sister. Just imagine being [laughs] at the dinner table and some 240-pound Austrian bodybuilder is like, "All right, who's stinking, [laughs] who's stinking up the place?" And his, and her mom loved it. She called him, uh, hi- her little devil. She says, uh, "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 wanna build relationships with him. Such attention to detail marked a difference between Arnold and all other body buil- builders. 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, 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, uh, insight from his live-in girlfriend. Uh, he ha- 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 godlike wonder. There's a bunch of things going on on this page. Th- these are not, like, the, what I'm reading to you is not coming one 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 godlike 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 in, almost that exact same line in a bunch of biographies of Steve Jobs. There's a line in George Lucas' biography where he meets his lifelong friend, but also at this point it was, like, this o- kind of older mentor to him, uh, Francis Ford Coppola. And George Lucas had spent a lot of his early life reading a bunch of biography and history, and when he meets Coppola, he's like, "Oh, so this is what it, w- what these books meant." He says, uh, there's a line, let me pull it 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 Caesars of history were. They were magnetic." It is 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

8. 24:16 – 26:57

   Always Learning and Proving His Parents Wrong

   1. DSDavid Senra24:16

      chose. And so that part reminded me of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was known to have undeniable charisma and to have a, an intense- Presence. Arnold had that too. And the amazing thing is as you go through the years and through the pages, and a- 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, that quote by the investor Josh Wolfe, that, "Chips on shoulders put chips in pockets." And he's always learning. An impression 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's 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, uh, 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 lec- to w- 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 reminded 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." So at this point in the story, his father is dead. His older brother, who, you know, didn't really have a good relationship with, winds up dying rather young, I think he was, like, 25 or 26 maybe, from driving drunk. Arnold has been stacking one accomplishment on another, and so his mom comes to America and visits him, spends time with both Barbara and Arnold. And 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. And it had to be incredibly satisfying, 'cause it was obvious that she was extremely proud of who he became and what he accomplished. And unlike his father and unlike his brother, she lived long enough to see it.

9. 26:57 – 30:15

   Optimism, Promotion, and Mastering Media

   1. DSDavid Senra26:57

      Okay, so another good idea from Arnold is the fact that he always spun everything for the positive. He was constantly like... Barbara would run into, like, a problem. We talked about this over and over again. It's, it's a fam- famous, uh, quote from Henry Kaiser that, uh, opportunity... "Problems are just opportunities in work clothes." Uh, I think a lot of normal people, they, like, let themselves get down, uh, or they get, you know, upset about something, and Arnold would, like, laugh it off. He'd be like, "You have nothing to worry about." There's... He, he'd repeat, like, "There's always a, a, 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, it 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. He ha- there's a bunch of these. And inside Polaroid, there was Landisms, and, and "optimism is a moral duty" was one of the Landisms. There's another quote, uh, 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 l- 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, uh, 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, my escape out of Austria. Something that he says in the documentary, this is why, why I was [laughs] thinking about this, is he's like, "Sometimes you hear a line that you didn't come up with, but it, it perfectly des- like, you could have come up with it because it c- 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 was hilarious. Uh, 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, ma- 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, uh, h- in his 70s. There's a line when I got to this part of the book that came to mind that, uh, when I was reading Anthony Bourdain's, uh, biography, where he said that you have to promote, promote, promote, or it all goes away. I think Arnold would agree with that sentiment.

10. 30:15 – 32:50

    Real Estate Fortune and Choosing Movie Roles

    1. DSDavid Senra30:15

       And so something else that's talked about in the documentary that I think a lot of people don't 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 tried to get him to play all these roles. He's like, "Listen, I'm not There's actually a, a fantastic line when he meets James Cameron to be interested in, in doing The Terminator, and he's like, "So tell me about, like, do you wanna be an actor?" He's like, "No, I don't wanna be an actor. I wanna 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, this 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 accrue a critical mass of liquid capital. And he's making that money because he's on salary at, at, for Joe, for his magazines. He has, like, these mail order programs that he's selling. Uh, he earns a bunch of money, uh, like, traveling the country doing, like, bodybuilding exhibitions and everything else. And so again, he winds up... He's just got... He's masterful at building relationships. This is in Santa Monica at the time, so he says, "Arnold had an uncanny knack for networking and an uncovered, a wise old realtor named Olga. Together they would buy a bunch of apartments on the west side." Uh, 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 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 motivation to succeed, he would rather die. And as the book goes on, she gets more and more desperate because she s- 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, it's like Arnold operated with the belief that he could learn every- anything, anything that he wanted to.

11. 32:50 – 34:20

    Learning Anything and Following Past Crossovers

    1. DSDavid Senra32:50

       If he put his mind to it and he invested the time, he could learn it. He immersed himself in accent removal sessions, acting classes, and fiddling lessons, so he, this is 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, made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Naval Ravikant. He said, "The best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed. They are creative expressions of cr- continuous learners in free markets." Creative expressions of continuous learners in 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. It's what Stephen King said, that imitation precedes creation. He kept focus on past crossovers like Steve Reeves, Gordon Mitchell, and Reg Park. They had all forged successful, 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 gonna notice some differences between what you and I have talked about so far and the book. There is a lot of sex in the book and also her inner, like, monologue and struggle. There's just one thing I wanna pull out because she's like... You know, you do feel sorry for her. They're just so fundamentally mismatched, yet she is addicted to Arnold.

12. 34:20 – 37:25

    The End of the Relationship and Resentful Old Friends

    1. DSDavid Senra34:20

       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 wanna get married?" And what makes matters even worse is that as their relationship is declining, he's starting this rapid ascent, and sh- 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 he's... 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 stay 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 s- uh, 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, uh, "We, of the leftover friends, became annoyed watching him act as if his stardom, stardom had been a certain fate. His increasing arrogance caused speculation among his old friends and our ent- and our former entourage. Our frequent phone calls," meaning people that are no longer, you know, in Arnold's life, are 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 jeal- jealous anger, each accommodated our schedules to meet for lunch or accept an invitation at a, 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, then 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 just be completely committed to what he wanted to do, to talk about this. It's not like he hid it. He w- he was very clear upfront about what he was gonna do. He made it very easy for you to interface with him. And yet they still were surprised by his success and continued to underestimate him year after year after year. And even his live-in girlfriend, who had the closest-- the front row seat to everything that's going on, is still surprised.

13. 37:25 – 39:43

    Underestimating Arnold and Lessons From Biographies

    1. DSDavid Senra37:25

       This is many years after they break up, or maybe two or three years after. So it says, "My sister Mary Anne..." This is the one that Arnold made fun of at the table for farting. [chuckles] It says, "My sister Mary Anne called me. Uh, 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 in Hyannis Port. 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 wa- This is many decade... This is, 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 of great people. Hopefully, one of the, 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 wanna buy the book... Actually, I'll leave th- I'll leave a link to this book and the other two books. Uh, he wr- he's written two autobiographies, one when he was 30, and I think one when he was 70. I will leave link to, uh, 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 wanna 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 t- 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, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon. Is this thing still on? Are you still there? [chuckles]

14. 39:43 – 43:14

    Show Wrap-Up: Book Links, Podcast Recommendations, and Founders AMA

    1. DSDavid Senra39:43

       There's two things that I wanted to elaborate on that I forgot to. So, uh, if you're listening to this, thanks for sticking around. Uh, the first thing is real fast. There's two episodes of Invest Like The Best, which is one of my favorite podcasts. What I-- I'll leave the links down below, but whatever you're listening to this on, if you just search, make sure you, uh, in whatever podcast player you're listening to, search for Invest Like The Best. Make sure you follow that show. Justin Mares, he actually, uh, uh, is a friend of mine. He 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, uh, in this area, and the way he thinks about it. It was-- I thought it was very fascinating. Text it to, uh, probably half a dozen people with my, uh, 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, you know, 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 best, uh, one of my favorite podcast episodes I have ever heard. The second and last thing I wanted to talk about is I wanna go deeper onto the Founders 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 wanna give you some previews of, like, some of the questions that are coming in. So first of all, one of the benefits are, is, and y- you should jump on this now because as, as I add more episodes, obviously the price will increase because the value increases. Um, but what happens is once you sign up in the welcome email, you get a private email. D- Please don't share that email. That, 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, 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 gonna 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, uh, later in life? This might be my favorite 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? Uh, another example, who are your f- what are five of your favorite stories of two people meeting that changed the director- direction of the biography's life? That was a fascinating question as well. What did... Oh, that 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? That's another one. Who was the founder that had the highest agency? And what are your f- uh, the ch- I'm just listing 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, uh, immediately. You also get to ask me questions. You can, uh, you-- people have sent in a bunch of questions. You're not limited to just one question. And the interesting thing, 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, I need a question to prompt that thinking. And so Founders AMA, just like everything I do, I look at it as an investment 'cause 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.

Episode duration: 43:14