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 Minard that's his brother on vacation I was sent to my Godmother's Farm 50 Mi away when they took my brother to Vienna and salsburg and all these other places I was 10 I
was left there for 2 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 Gustaf returned from the miserable front of World War II defeated he was now a 38-year-old man
diminished but domineering gustaf's militaristic regulations blanketed his sons Arnold obeyed his father without question discipline consistency and Excellence became his family's motto goose off drank an entire story in two words he forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right angles they had to keep their elbows to their waist if the boys did not obey the back of his
hand was quick to strike their face Arnold's father pitted his two sons against each other he made them compete in every activity because his brother was older his brother would usually be the one to win Arnold's going to turn all of this into Fuel and drive a Swift learner of Life Arnold often in 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 re Park's path and chose to replicate his professional life re 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 regge park of Europe he dug in to master self-discipline not only did he improve his muscularity but he also developed a Harden 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 Lyon 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 to 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 life style remains 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 start 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 okay so that's a brief overview of Arnold's early life and an excerpt from the book I'm going to 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 schweger 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 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 going to read this quote that I think sets up the fundamental mismatch between Arnold and his girlfriend at the time and this is
what Arnold said a conflict grew in our relationship she was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary life and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of an ordinary life she thought that I would settle down that I would reach the top in my field and then level off but that's a concept that has no place in my thinking for me life is
continuously being hungry the meaning of life is not simply to exist to survive but it is to move ahead to go up to achieve and to conquer I wanted to grow I wanted to continue on the life she wanted would not permit that and so what this podcast is going to be about is this is Arnold before the fame before the success 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 person that Barbara had ever met and so I want to 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 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 other there back in 2004 and so he goes back in time he's talking about like this is why I had this singular Focus there's like a Clarity of purpose I think when you find One Singular thing that you 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 want to do and you burn the boats and you you never doubt yourself and I think most people never experienced that in life I think a lot of people that have never experienced it actually thinks it's limiting when I would what I what I
would argue is actually it's the opposite it frees you because you know exactly what your mission and is at life and if you watch a documentary read any biographies of Arnold like your mission could change in life at first it was bodybuilding then it was his movie career and know 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 going to reference that LBJ Maxim over and over again because I feel that that is Arnold all day long if you do everything you will win it became clear to me that bodybuilding was the thing for me this is what I was meant for at that time and I then saw very clearly what I could achieve and that gave me a
tremendous amount of motivation instead of training two hours a day like most people did most other bodybuilders I would train twice a day totally abnormal sometimes three times a day and sometimes four times a day I would go home during my lunchtime and then for an hour straight just do sit-ups to get that extra hour that no one else had gotten in just to be ahead of everyone
else many people have potential what separates the champion from the guy that is the second best or the loser is the person who really has the psychological advantage everything is in the mind I had a psychological advantage and he talks about why he's like I grew up he grew up in a house there's no television there's no such thing as television he
didn't see his first movie 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
and this is why I always felt that my way out was through bodybuilding I could not have figured any other way and so this singular focus on this Clarity of mind about what he wants to do actually makes him really really easy to understand if you go through I probably have I don't know 60 50 50 or 60 highlights to 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 because he tells you very clearly what's important to him and you'll see what I mean in one second this is the fundamental mismatch between him and Barbara remember how he how 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'm always going to grow I always want to continue she she wanted a life that would not permit that she says multiple times in the book like why would 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 diff 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 I gave him my note he read it toss 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 cost so
this is the fundamental mismatch he's going to be rude insensitive Machin likee 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 I was like I'm just going to run reg Parks blueprint he was very open and honest with her which is the the fun the frustrating part about reading this book cuz like no this is what I'm going to do and then she's constantly like no do this other thing he's like I just told you I'm going to focus like a machine get to the top of bodybuilding
then once I get there I use that as a 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 I there's a book I did a long time ago it's a very popular with entrepreneurs it's by this guy named Bill Walsh who was a 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 Champions behave like Champions before they're Champions and we're seeing that with Arnold and Bill Walsh says like the culture recedes positive results it doesn't get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand Champions behave like
Champions before their 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 want to have a normal life and yet she's in this
intense relationship with an absolute maniac and she is shocked at his level of focus and discipline this is why I always say that if you think about the people that you and I set 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 stud in the podcast they have a ruthless competitive drive that is terrifying to an ordinary person terrifying and so Barbara sees that I think Arnold's like what 22 23 we were in the story they hadn't seen each other for like 3 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 going to be like we're going to get away we're going to have this romantic time and she gets there and Arnold's like no I'm going to be working and I'm going to be focused Arnold had endured a labor intensive summer dedicated to the art of his body
grueling training weight conscious eating restricted socializing and scientific sleeping he stalked through the season with impeccable discipline the man I beheld was more competitor than boyfriend this is she's showing up right before a competition and expecting this is so crazy to me and expecting him to like jut 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 PRI priority after the contest was over wrong you're asking him not to be Arnold and then she goes into all the additional things that he was willing to do that his competitors were not at this this is on this exact same page goes back to that LBJ him 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 here her response to watching how he approaches
his work hearing him speak about it I feared the consequences of merging with a boyfriend so addicted to discipline goals and a claim and what's fascinating is that sentence is on one page on the left side of the book on the right page of the book goes into the environment in which he grew up the fact that his family had no indoor plumbing no shower
no flushing toilet think about the contrast think about the J to position there I'm shocked I'm kind of scared that this guy is so addicted to discipline goals and a claim he grew up without running water now he has the ability to channel his focus into an activity that will make him and his unborn grandchildren wealthy and you find it surprising my response to this
is of course he's like this and Arnold does exactly what I think if you're this driven monomaniacal Maniac what you should do clear communication with the people in your life about what is important to you he made it clear that his world was huge and I must learn to accept that other people in activities demanded his attention he discussed his psyching up before contest his
egotistical drive for Success his compulsion to postpone Alternatives and the let down 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 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 as though he's insensitive I found him incredibly insensitive to others he was not one to take responsibility for hurting other
people's feelings he said that they should T 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 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 him in one other book I read calls him 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 into context of his early life to him life was something you directed to me life was something that happened again there's a 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 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 just 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 and setting up his intense motivation to succeed Arnold's sensitivities to his father's remarks left him with say I am going to prove you wrong attitude this neg this is one of my favorite lines in the book is a really is a great way to think about Arnold this negative motivation pushes him to achieve the maximum potential in
every activity which he did he got to the highest 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 Zayn was also a competitor and a
friend of theirs and he would give his breakdown of Arnold's extreme drive he believed that Arnold 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 Zayn also studied Carl Young 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 Young's theory of archetypes Frank saw that Arnold fit the trickster archetype the one who's humor who was humorous and perhaps merciless cunning could outsmart others Frank also expounded upon his what he learned in tibetan buddhismspiritual saying you know having
these conversations with people that know him it helped give her a better understanding of why Arnold was had such single-minded motivation and then here's the problem she's not I always say like learning is not memorizing information learning is changing Behavior she's like oh this makes me feel better and then she's like oh I just wish that it hadn't
made him so monomaniacal if he wasn't so monomaniacal he wouldn't have been Arnold and so another thing about Arnold is he had this like superhuman levels of Charisma uh there's many stories in the book where like her family at first is like why are you dating you know 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 you're essentially if you had manners you wouldn't say like I'm about to redo something here that just made me laugh but people found him enduring so much so that like Barbara's mom decades like 15 years after they broke up would be inviting uh Arnold to like celebrations
or having lunch with him or talking to him on the phone and you know he didn't know any better so he would just say out or maybe he did know better he just would say outlandish things 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 or 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
Maryann Maryann is is Barbara's sister just imagine being at the dinner table and some 240 lb Austrian bodybuilder is like all right who s who stinking up the place and his and her mom loved it she called him uh his 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 story is this ability to build a network of allies to get people they were attracted to him and they' want to build relationships with him such attention to detail marked a difference between Arnold and all other body 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
what 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 had he possessed unfathomable dedication Arnold spent 364 days a year on his own terms Arnold always felt self-confident no matter the disparity and 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 things going on in this page these are not like 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 almost that exact same line in a bunch of biographies of Steve Jobs there's a line in George Lucas's biography where he meets his
lifelong friend but also at this point it was like this kind of older mentor to him uh Francis Ford Copa and George Lucas had spent a lot of his early life reading a bunch of biography and history and when he meets Copa he's like oh so this is what it what these books meant he says there's a line let me pull up real quick Lucas is talking about Francis for Copa Francis could sell ice
to Eskimos he he has Charisma Beyond logic I can see now what kind of men the great Caesars of History were they were magnetic 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 chose and so that part reminded me of Steve
Jobs Steve Jobs was known to have undeniable Charisma and to have an intense presence Arnold had that too and the amazing thing is as you go through the years and through the pages and as you turn the pages Arnold gets older and yet he remains remarkably consistent he is smarter than he looks he understands the world runs on relationships so he
cultivates them he's constantly using the way he grew up as fuel I love that that quote by the investor Josh Wolf 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 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 brick layer 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 acred undergraduate credits from Santa Monica College his vocabulary expanded by several thousand more more words and he worked to Le to 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 bar 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 because 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 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 a fam famous uh quote from Henry Kaiser that uh opportunity problems are just opportunities and work close 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 and be like you have nothing to worry about there's he he repeat like there's always a a
solution to every problem there's always a way out just keep going forward and so when it just got to this one line he just says he always spun things for the positive I thought of two quotes that I absolutely love one from my personal hero Edwin land he says optimism is a moral duty that is such a great line optimism is a moral duty that edwiin lamb repeated it so much that when you
read biographies of them 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 Jeff isms in the case of like Jeff Bezos inside Amazon he had there's a bunch of these and inside Polaroid there was lism and
and optimism is a moral duty was one of the lism 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 for the bright side changing your mind just like you can I love that idea of it's like oh I can get out from the shade into the sunshine I can physically move my body I can do the same thing with my mind I think it's something that Edwin land Carnegie and Arnold all had in common
another smart thing that Arnold understood he understood from the very beginning the power of media whether that's magazines when he first saw the reg park and realized hey this is my blueprint this is my my Escape out of Austria something that he says in the documentary this is why why I was thinking about this is he's like sometimes you hear a line that you
didn't come up with but it it perfectly dis like you could have come up with it because it perfectly describes how you feel and so he heard this line from Ted Turner that says early to bed early to rise work like hell and advertise and that he's like I love that that's exactly how like how I try to approach my work and so Arnold 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 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 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 rules because because he was so big and unusual looking at the time they try to get him to play all these roles he's like listen I'm not there's actually a fantastic line when he meets James Cameron to be interested in doing the Terminator he's like so tell me about
like do you want to be an actor he's like no I don't want to be an actor I want to be a star and so he was very selective onto what roles that he wanted to play because that was his goal and so for most of their early relationship they're just living in like this small apartment together until Arnold starts buying these like multifam like
apartments and then just living in one we lived in a Frugal apartment for 5 years so Arnold could a crew a critical mask 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 mailer programs that he's selling uh he earns a bunch of money like traveling the country doing like bodybuilding exhibitions and everything
else and so again he winds up he's just got he's masterful 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 baring 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 5 years
with him i' become conditioned to endure an emotionless increasingly self-centered robot I dreaded competing for his time and she would describe his behavior when he's concentrating on a goal he would turn off his sensitivities to concentrate he would grow distant and he would become unfeeling to anyone other than himself Arnold was never satisfied this man was masterful in
plotting the necessary actions to carry out great feats through goal setting he fulfilled almost every competitive and financial craving he was the most goal oriented man I have ever met and this is a crazy line if you erased his motivations to Ed he would rather die and as the book goes on she gets more and more desperate because she realizes
oh my God he's going to the exact same way he was with bodybuilding he is with business and now he is with movies this is never going to stop and really for our purposes is like Arnold operated with the belief that he could learn every anything anything that he wanted to if he put his mind to it and he invested the time he could learn it he immersed himself in accet removal
sessions acting classes and fiddling lessons so he this 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 nval ravikant he said the best jobs are neither decreed nor degreed they are Creative Expressions of 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 so what Stephen King said that imitation precedes creation he kept focus on past crossovers like Steve Reeves Gordon Mitchell and re Park they had all forged success successful makeovers from muscles to movies what also helped Arnold is that he held Arnold held a PhD in Charisma and so if
you happen to pick up this book and read it you're going to notice some differences between what you and I have talked about so far 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 want to 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 she cannot she tries to keep pulling herself away she just cannot and so you see this in her monologue here she's like 5 years and 9 month months time is enough to know that this man will never marry you he does not even believe in the kind of love that you do and so it's finally clicking towards the end of the relationship
Arnold needed time for his personal expansion bodybuilding had only been its beginning he now needed just as many powers of concentration for future development he was not motivated to merge our separate dreams she would ask him over and over again why won't you marry me why haven't you asked me to marry you please marry me why don't you want to get married and what makes
matters even worse is that as they're relationship is declining he's starting this rapid ascent and she she's saying I would never be the wife who' enjoy the Delights of his career I was just a girlfriend who supported his Ascent I knew I was destined for relative normaly 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 say the same and so I need to include this part because is just an aspect of human nature if you're constantly putting your 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 stard stardom had been a certain fate his increasing arrogance caused speculation among his old friends in our ENT in our former Entourage our frequent phone calls meaning people that are no longer you know in Arnold's life
or no longer on like the same path as him traded nasty gossip friends reveled in stories that placed Arnold in a Shabby light we reveled in badmouthing Arnold each friend was losing him to agents directors actors managers businessmen and politicians however despite our G 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 and you're not actually friends and if people do that to you that's the sure sign that you
should probably eliminate them from your life life but what's so fascinating is like they've these people knew Arnold they saw him for year after year after year after year to be completely committed to what he wanted to do to talk about this it's not like he hit it he he was very clear upfront about what he was going to 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 living girlfriend who had the closest the front row seat to everything that's going on is still surprised this is many years after they break up or maybe two or 3 years after so it says my sister Maryanne this is the one that Arnold
made fun of at the table for farting says my sister marann 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
hyenas Point his girlfriend laid claim to Kennedy royalty and so this mistake this mistake of continually underestimating and therefore being surprised of a formidable individual like Arnold continues as I watch this is many decade this 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 stupified 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 things that you're getting out of listening to this podcast is not only can we know that we know a lot can change in one lifetime that we can turn ourselves we can build ourselves into formidable individuals for the benefit of our own life but you'll also be able to spot it and therefore not be surprised when you see it in other people too and so if you
want to buy the book actually I'll leave I'll leave a link to this book and the other two books uh he he's written two autobiographies one when he was 30 and I think one when he was 70 I will leave link to leave link to all three books down below and if you buy the book you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time if you want to go deeper on
the lessons that we're learning in the podcast and support the podcast at the same time make sure you sign up for Founders AMA once you sign up you get access to a private email I read every single one of those emails personally you can ask me questions and I I answer those questions in ama ask me anything episodes if that sounds interesting to you the link is down below and available
at Founders podcast.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 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'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 Mayers he actually has a friend of mine actually listens to the podcast he did an excellent episode with my friend Patrick it is episode
333 and it is about the US Health crisis and the businesses that he's building uh in this area and the way he thinks about I thought it was very fascinating text it to 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 youve 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 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 one of my favorite
podcast episodes I have ever heard the second and last thing I wanted to talk about is I want to go deeper onto the founders AMA feed the private feed that I've been working on as of to 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 Founders podcast.com but I want to 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 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 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 going to give you some examples of some of the
questions that I've made episodes about and so here are some of my favorites who are the best strategists and why if you had to put 100% of your net worth in one founder-led company and you couldn't sell it for 20 years which company would this be and why what are some examples and who are your favorite late developer Founders meaning Founders that started later in life that started their first
business uh later in life this might be my favorite of all time if you were to create a 5 to S 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 change the director direction of the biography's life that
was a fascinating question as well what did oh I went into even more detail about this what did you learn from having dinner with Monger why do you insist on Extreme levels of focus it's another one who's the founder that had the highest agency and what are your 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 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 are already learning some of these things I'll never bring up on the podcast because I need a question to prompt that thinking and so Founders a just like everything I do I look at it as an investment because both you and I are looking for ideas that make our lives and our work better that link is down below and available Founders podcast.com and I'll talk to you again soon