Arnold Schwarzenegger on Life, His Career, and the Importance of Having Goals

My life is about victories and defeat. I've lost in bodybuilding, I've lost in weightlifting, I've lost in powerlifting, I lost with movies. I remember movies that came out that went right in the toilet. I mean, it was pitiful to say the Arnold's facial expression is not as good as the horse's facial expression. So it was things like the reviews, the critics, the beating that I got, it was like, unbelievable, right? So, but I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, the bottom line is that we can only learn from failure. I have the unbelievable, almost surreal honor of introducing our special guest tonight. Arnold Schwarzenegger is clearly a hometown hero. He's a 13-time bodybuilding champion, a mega blockbuster Hollywood star, the governor of one of the largest economies in the world, the state of California, successful businessman and entrepreneur, hometown hero, global icon. Please help me welcome Arnold Schwarzenegger. So good to have you. Thank you. That feels like an appropriate welcome. Absolutely. As you probably know anyway already, my relationship with David Booth started way back decades ago. What impressed me the most about David Booth was that he had the belief that I always had, which is that you have to have a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish and where you want to go in life. And I was always a fanatic about that. You know, I dreamt exactly about, "I want to be the world champion in bodybuilding." I saw myself what I should look like on that stage in London at the Mr. Universe contest. And my vision became a reality, of course, with hard work and with a plan. And so when I talked to David Booth about investing and about Dimensional Funds, he said to me, he says, "You know, one day it will be $1 trillion fund." And you know something, the amazing thing is that while we are sitting here today, it could easily reach that $1 trillion. Because it's at 996 or something. It's dancing around just in front of the gate of $1 trillion. So think about that. And it was all because he had a vision, a very clear vision where he wanted to go, and he worked out a plan. So his whole approach was always kind of like, not to just go according to your mood and how to invest, but more an academic approach. And there was a new way of thinking, because everyone just, you know, guesses, "Oh, I think this is gonna be a great investment. Let's invest here." And then sometimes those investments go south. And sometimes, you know, they work. Because he's so smart, he's so dedicated, and David Booth is not, I mean, we all know him well, I mean, it's like, he's not one of those guys that is interested in himself. It's all about service to the others. He always talks about, "I want to serve the others. I want to make millions and millions of people happy. I want to make the best investments for them." It's never about him. And so that's another really extraordinary quality of his that I really love. So anyway, I hope this was not too short of an answer for your question that you had. I was very clear. It's quite funny we start this way because I was very clear there's no point to preparing for this conversation 'cause I have a feeling it's gonna go wherever it goes. But I do love that you started with a point about vision. And yes, Dimensional had a grand vision. It was about the pursuit of truth and what truth can do for people's financial experience. But when we talk about vision, I mean, I think if you've read Arnold's books, if you watch the miniseries, if you know about Arnold's life, vision has always been a really important part of your life. So I'd love to ask you about this. And there's a quote from one of your books, "If I can see it and believe it, then I can achieve it." You talked about vision as a kid and moving to the US. Can you maybe expand on that a little bit? How was a child in Austria, did you come up with this grand vision to move to the US and be a bodybuilding champion? Well, it's not that difficult really, because when I was like 14 years old and I started getting interested in muscles and in strength, I started seeing Hercules movies on the screen. But I never really believed kind of like, this is possible, that this is an actual human being. I thought it was some special effects, even though in those days they didn't have special effects. But I mean, I just did not know what to make of it. And then one day, I saw this bodybuilding magazine that had Reg Park on the cover of the magazine, and it said, "From Mr. Universe to Hercules." And I bought the magazine in Austria. And I found this friend of mine that spoke English, 'cause I only knew school English, and so I couldn't really translate everything that it said. And so he helped me with the translation. And he talked about how this guy, Reg Park from Leeds, from a factory town in England, worked out five hours a day and then became Junior, Mr. Great Britain, and won the British Powerlifting Championships. And then in 1951, he won Mr. Universe. Not only that, but then in 1958, he came back and he won it again. And not only that, then in 1965, he came back and won it again. So then I realized this is an actual person. So I read everything about this guy, Reg Park, and about how he trained. And I basically just followed his training. And I visualized myself being on stage exactly like Reg Park, except with my face on it. And I chased that dream. And I tell you, because I had that vision, it was so much fun to work out hours and hours. On Saturday, the gym was locked, you couldn't get in. It was underneath the stadium in Graz, the Liebenauer Stadium. And I broke in, I broke the window, crawled, I opened it up this window on top, and then I crawled in, and I trained on Saturday and Sunday, secretly, in that place. But it was so much fun. It was cold, it was freezing, like right now. Sometimes my hands were stuck on a steel bar when I was doing chin-ups, because it was so cold. But it was fun because I was chasing this vision. And every rep that I did got me one step closer to making this vision become a reality. And that's fun. I mean, you know what you're chasing, and then you go after it, and you see yourself getting closer and closer and closer. So this is why, so then eventually with the age of 20, I became the youngest Mr. Universe ever on that stage where Reg Park won three times the Mr. Universe contest. So I was the youngest, became the youngest Mr. Universe ever. So I realized that you have to have a very clear vision and you have to have a dream. And this is why I say, "I saw it and I believed it 100%, and therefore I knew." 'Cause I could see it, I could believe it, I could achieve it. That was the rule. And this is why I used the same principles when I went into show business. When everyone said in the 70s, "This is no way that you ever gonna be a leading man, Arnold. You have an accent, your name is Schwarzwälder Schnitzel, or something like that." They said, "And then, I mean, it's like your body. Look at this body. I mean, you weigh 250 pounds. And now the new stars in the 70s, they don't do Hercules movies anymore, Arnold. I mean, we like you, we want to help you to open up a health food store or something like that. Or a gym, but not to be a leading man in the movies, because now it's Dustin Hoffman. He weighs 140 pounds. Woody Allen weighs 128 pounds." But you did work with Danny DeVito, though. Yes! But Danny was nice and chubby. It made me look good. Never complained about that. But I mean, so the bottom line is that I saw myself as another Clint Eastwood. I said to myself, "If Clint Eastwood can be doing action movies and Westerns and all that stuff, why can't I? I can do that. I can go and study acting." So I studied acting, I did exactly the same as in bodybuilding. I worked five hours a day on it, you know, accent removal classes. Not that they worked, but I mean, it doesn't matter. But English classes and acting classes, stunt classes, you know, sword fighting classes, everything that you can think of I did. And you know, and eventually, I was hired for a movie, and for another show and another show, and another TV show, another movie. And then all of a sudden, I was doing "Conan the Barbarian," you know, for a big studio, for Universal Studio. And so it was, again, the vision. No one could talk me out of it. I was absolutely convinced that I can do it. And the same thing happened again with the governorship. I had a very clear vision what needed to be done with California in order to go and bring California back again. You have to see it, believe it, and achieve it then. I love the themes. I'm actually gonna go on to the quote for those of you in the front. I think everybody could see it. "When you're chasing a vision and working toward a big goal, there's nothing more energizing than making progress." I've heard you talk about this repeatedly, and it's something that stuck with me. Every time I hear you talking about it, I hear you say something like what you just said, if it's something worthwhile, it doesn't feel like discipline. It doesn't feel like work, it doesn't feel like resilience. It feels like you're in service of something great. Well, people always ask me, and says, "I mean, you must have had a lot of discipline," but I didn't. You know, discipline is not one of the things that I would say is my forte. It is more like chasing the vision. And so this is why I was there every morning at 7:00 in the morning in the gym for two and a half hours working out, because I was excited chasing the vision rather than having the discipline. And then the joy, I mean, like when there were my training partners that would say, "Oh, another 500 reps sit-ups." And they were kind of like appalled by this, "Got another 500 reps." But I was looking forward to the 500 reps, rep after rep, because to me, every rep took me closer again to the goal. And so I think that there's a difference between when you have to show up because the doctor says you have to train every day so that you can lower your cholesterol, you know, then it's a burden in a way, because unless you have now a new goal and say, "I'm gonna get healthy, I'm gonna get fit." You got to have the goal, otherwise, you always need discipline, and you need someone to drag you back in and stuff like that. So I just never believed in that. I believed more and just seeing it clearly and than going after it. And like I said, to me, it was joy. People, when journalists came to the gym, and they always came to me after the workout, and they said, "Everyone is looking kind of serious in the gym. Everyone is looking kind of angry, but you always smile in the gym. Why is that?" I said, "Because I know what I'm chasing. I'm having a great time. I love what I'm doing. I know exactly..." So this is, it was a different approach, and so this is why I always tell people, "You can go and read and talk about all of the details, if it's investment or anything like that, but if you don't have a very clear vision in the goal, you don't have anything." It's like if the captain does not know which harbor to go to with this ship, there is no per preferable wind, right? I mean, you can have the best airplane in the world, the most sophisticated airplane in the world, but if the pilot does not know where to go, he's not gonna end up anywhere, or most likely crash. So this is what happens to a lot of people in life, because they don't know where they're going, they crash. They get depressed, they're down. So this is why, because they have no purpose and no vision. That's why it's so important to know, to let kids, you know, the kids when they get older, to just kind of really articulate, "What do you want to do? Okay, you want to go to university?" So many people in America send their kids to university, but they don't know why. I mean, how stupid is that? "Just go to university." I mean, for what? What is the goal? I mean, if you said to me, "Okay, I want to be a doctor, and I wanna work in this hospital," I'd say, "That's great, go to university. I'll pay for it." Right? Because now there's a goal. Now we know that that student is gonna go and become a doctor, and he's really gonna contribute and save people's lives and all that. Or a carpenter or a bus driver, whatever it may be, just let's have a goal and then shoot for that goal. That is the most important thing in no matter what you do. So to us mere mortals in the room, some of these ideas sound super human. Like, has doubt, fear, anxiety ever been an issue for you? Do you recall times in your life where you felt those things and really had to overcome them? No, I think it's clear that you have, you feel anxiety. I mean, otherwise you don't care of what you're doing. Like every time I'm in front of a camera and the director comes to me, and he says, "Okay Arnold, we are doing this and this scene, action," my heart rate goes up. I guarantee it goes from 120 to 160. That second when he says, "Action." 'Cause it's like, you know, because what's going on inside is like you say, "Oh shit, I'm on the spot. This is now recorded. If I screw up, I look all screwed up." I mean, everyone will see it, you know? So, yes, but that's good to be afraid of, kind of like making sure that you're performing well. That's what, guys, I think what energizes us, that gives us the energy we want to outdo each other and stuff like that. You know, the ego thing comes in and all that. So I think that all of that is good. So, yes, I have that, but in general, I never doubt my goals. I'm always 100% sure that I will reach them. And I think that the visualization and the hard work really pay off. And the other thing that of course I have mentioned in this book, since we're talking about the book, is that you got to not listen to the naysayers. Because every step of the way in my career, and I'm sure a lot of you have had the same thing, that someone will say I have no idea what you're talking about. But it sounded amazing. That's why I'm telling you that. No, no, but the people, just when I say that I wanted to go to America, when I was 10 years old, I wanted to go to America, they said, "Well, who's gonna wait for you over there?" Everyone just said this is a stupid idea. Then I said I wanted to get into bodybuilding. "Bodybuilding? It's an American sport. What's the matter with you? Why don't you do soccer? And why don't you do skiing? Do something that's Austrian. So it was always negative. Then when I then did make it in bodybuilding, and I wanted to get into movies, they say that would never happen. So the key thing is to just ignore the naysayers. There's plenty of them around. What is dangerous is if you have a doubt. That's dangerous. Because everyone else has a doubt. And everyone else says, "Why do you do that? It will never happen." But if you always then ever doubt, then your mind is working inside you and is trying to derail you. So this is why, this is what you have to be very careful of. And always be very clear of where you want to go, and to chase that. You talked about, a bit about reinvention. You reinvented yourself from, you know, an Austrian child to a world bodybuilding champion. And you didn't just say, "I'm gonna make a career change." And you didn't just say, "I'm gonna be an actor." And you didn't just say, "I'm gonna be an action star." You said, "I'm gonna be a Hollywood leading man." And then when you decided that politics was interesting and you could be useful in politics, you didn't say, "I'm gonna be in city council. I'm gonna be the governor of the most impressive economy in the United States." Why always for the top spot in a given industry? I think it's more risky. You know, the bigger the goals, the more risk. The thing is that I believe that we, a lot of times, are frozen and cannot move forward because we are afraid of failure. See what I'm saying? Afraid of failure is really terrible because you can't make a move. You wonder, "Oh my God, what if this doesn't turn out well? Maybe I go and I'm gonna talk to this girl over here, but what if she turns me down?" You know what I'm saying? So it is like you are afraid of every move that you make. And so I said to myself, "Well, how are you ever gonna be successful? How do you ever know how far you can go?" And that's why sports is so great, because in weightlifting, you fail every day. Every day you fail. You do your curls, you use your 40-pound dumbbells, then you use your 50-pound dumbbells, then you use your 60 pounds, then you pick up the 70 pounds, and all of a sudden, you can't do it anymore. You fail. But that doesn't mean you're a failure. Maybe the next time, maybe in a year from now, but I'm gonna do it. I remember the bench press, I tried 500-pound bench press for at least 10 times, the 11th time I did it. So it's okay, it doesn't mean because you've failed that you're a failure. The only way you ever know how far you can go and how successful you are, what you're meant to be, is if you're not afraid. You got to break through that, the barrier that holds you back. And so, to me, I think this is another very, very important thing to recognize that we all have this, and vision really will help you overcome that. And again, I love that you started with vision because, and you mentioned David and the vision of Dimensional, and we're not going to go half step and hope it works out for clients, 'cause it's not our money, it's their client's money. So we're always really, really committed to that. And it's hard work and it requires resilience, which takes me to this next quote from your book, "Be Useful," "There is no shortcut or growth hack or magic pill that can get you around the hard work of doing your job well, of winning something you care about, or of making your dreams come true." I love that. But that gets really hard when, you use the term failure, when you, most people would qualify something as a failure, so you, I think you got second in the first bodybuilding competition, correct? Did you think about that at the time as a failure? Or did you think, "Oh, I gotta learn something, and it's just gonna make me better for next time?" No, I mean, I, my life is about victories and defeat. I've lost in bodybuilding, I've lost in weightlifting, I've lost in powerlifting, I lost with movies. I remember movies that came out that went right in the toilet. I mean, it was pitiful to say the Arnold's facial expression is not as good as the horse's facial expression. So it was things like that, the reviews, the critics, the beating that I got, it was like unbelievable, right? So, but I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, the bottom line is that we can only learn from failure. You don't learn much from victory. You say, "Okay, I can stay with the vision. This is was what helped me on this, in bodybuilding. I can do the same thing in acting. I can do the same thing as governor. I can do the same thing with charity events," and whatever it is. But the real thing, the real substance that you learn is from failure because you can analyze it in an honest way and say, "Here's why I failed." And so this is why, you know, it never really kind of like made me feel like I'm a loser, because there were just people that were better, and there were movies that came out that were better. It's very simple. So that means I have to go and make more effort to be better the next time. And so I remember I came out with "Last Action Hero" one year, and oh, we were getting beaten up left and right. You know, "The movie was not, this 'Last Action Hero,' it was not as much action as I thought it would be," and blah, blah blah, and all this kind of stuff. Then I said, "Okay, we are gonna do better the next time." So I got together with Jim Cameron, and I said, "Let's do 'True Lies.'" And then we did "True Lies," and that became one of the highest-grossing movies of the year. So it's like, you know, you always have to come back stronger and not feel like, "Oh my God, I lost there," and stuff like this. Yeah, so I had my losses, even in my personal life, my marriage, right? I mean, it was, I screwed up. So, but you have to kind of like just say what it is and take the blame for it rather than having all kinds of excuses. That's how you grow, that's how you learn. Arnold, when you have such a strong sense of vision, you feel like you can see the future almost. Can you recall moments, whether it's bodybuilding or Hollywood or in politics, where you were just blown away, incredibly surprised at how different the reality of that industry is versus what you were expecting? No, I mean, look, I think that the best training that I got to go into politics was the acting. First of all, Hollywood is filled with sharks. The sharks are everywhere. And Hollywood can destroy you within a short period of time. It's a very, very dangerous place. Not dangerous just because of the stunts that you have to do and all this. No, it's the psychological danger that people one day are all the way on the top and the next day they can fall all the way to the bottom. You're always as good as your last paycheck. You're always as good as your last movie. So that's how you get judged. And it is, there is no mercy whatsoever. It's a brutal town. And now you go to Sacramento and you become governor, and people ask me, and says, "This must be tough for you with all politicians. I mean, you can't really trust them." And I said, "No, I'm very well trained." I said, "Hollywood is full of sharks, and this business politics is no different. It's full of sharks." I'm very fortunate that I've seen, you know, the world of bodybuilding from inside and outside. And even today I still run the Arnold Classic, which are the biggest fitness festivals in the world, Columbus, Ohio, in Birmingham, England, in South Africa, you know, in South America. And you know, we are all over the place, and we are promoting bodybuilding and health and fitness and all that stuff. So I'm staying involved in all of those things, but my new thing now is, of course, the environment, and to make sure that we move forward and that we recognize the fact that we have 7 million people a year die because of pollution. And so I just feel like I think we all can do our share to fight that. It has nothing to do with climate change as much as... 'Cause climate change kills 25,000 people a year today. And not to take this too loosely, that's sad, but 7 million die because of pollution. So I'd rather talk about the pollution we should get rid of rather than climate change. Because if we get rid of pollution, then we also can get rid of climate change, 'cause pollution causes climate change. So to me, that is the real award is to kind of like, you know, make this a better place than I inherited it. That's what my commitment is. All of these things you've just talked about essentially signal big ideas. It strikes me, and probably everyone, you're not really focused on the pothole in Vegas. So every time you think of something, it's a big idea. And I was really impressed to learn through the miniseries in the book how focused you are on sales. You're a big sales proponent, whether it's standing in your Speedos on the streets of, I think it was Munich, were you? Promoting the gym, or selling a big idea in Hollywood or in politics. Other than the smoking tent, which probably not all of us can do to sell our services, what are some other things that you did to bridge the gap and bring people along for the ride so they could see a big vision? Well, I think that the key thing is that we kind of are inclusive and bring people together, because there's so many divisions, especially today. The amount of kind of like hatred that's going on, you know, worldwide, between the left and the right, and the center and the green, and the this and the that. I mean, it's insane. Because what really should happen ideally is that no matter what party you belong to, you should be working towards making your neighborhood, your city, your state, or your country a place. And so I don't have to agree with you on everything, but we can work together. I mean, there's no such thing as that we agree with everything with anybody. I mean, it's just that that's just the way it is. So I think we shouldn't look at the other side as the enemy. We should look at them as kind of, "Welcome in, let's sit down and let's figure out a way of how to solve this problem." 'Cause the most important thing is that you're a public servant and not a party servant. So yes, you belong to a party, everyone does, but you should serve the public, not the party. That is, to me, was always the key thing. And when you talk about promotion and selling, I think that it is extremely important that no matter what product you have, you gotta sell it. You gotta say, you gotta be able to go and communicate that to the world. So that was my big challenge in bodybuilding. In bodybuilding, everyone said, "No, no, no, this is not, we don't wanna do that." So then I said, "Maybe we should rename it, and maybe we should call it progressive resistance training." Sounds very sophisticated, right? People said, "Oh, what is that?" They said, "Oh yeah, this is like training with resistance, with weights." They said, "Like bodybuilding?" I said, "No, no, no, no, it's just resistance training. It's just to get you in shape, to get you fit." "Oh, I like that." And then all of a sudden in the late 70s, it caught on, because we stopped using the name bodybuilding, and we started calling it progressive resistance training. And so all of a sudden, this sport of bodybuilding that was always in the dungeon became big. Then they had, movie stars had to have muscles, TV stars had to have muscles. You saw muscles everywhere, in the ads, the Calvin Klein ads right up there, guys with abs and with pectoral muscles and deltoids and all stuff. It changed the world. So this is selling, you got to find exactly what you need to do. Every movie that we do, we study and say, "How do we sell this movie?" Is this an action movie? Is it a love story? How do we appeal more to the women? How do we appeal more to the men? How do we appeal more to the young kids? What do we say to the young kids?" And this is how it goes. It's all about selling. So this is a key thing is you got to sell, sell, sell. Because if people don't know you have a product, you can have the best product in the world, but they will never buy it because they don't know. So you got to be out there and sell, beat the drum and sell. And find unique ways so they look at you. Because you said that I was running around in my Speedos, in my posing trunks, on a construction site in December, in Munich, in 1966. That's true. But I wanted to outdo the other gym. I was the trainer in the gym, and the other gym had more members. So I felt like if I go just with my posing trunks on a freezing day and start working on the construction site and helping the guys with the cutting wood and all that stuff, they were all looking at me kind of like, "What is this guy doing?" But the press came. The press came and they took pictures. The next day I was in the newspaper, "Schwarzenegger, trainer of the Universal Gym, you see, you know, working outside with nothing on," blah, blah blah. And so the name of the gym was in the thing, and our membership skyrocketed. So just the kind of thing, then when I won Mr. Universe, we did the same thing again. We went the press, we told the press about it, they gave more publicity to the gym. And this is how it became really the most successful gym. It was all about selling and figuring out how to sell. So this is why I believe in selling and in communicating what your product is. I'm assuming your advice to the audience as financial professionals isn't to go out in the cold in their skivvies and do construction. We find something else. No, no, no, no, no. If it helps their company, I would not hold back from anything. I have a feeling we're gonna have a lot of people in the gym tomorrow morning getting ready for this. So a lot of what you've talked about is bringing people along for the ride, enrolling them in your vision somehow, some way, whether it's selling to external parties or bringing people in your staff or other politicians. I've heard you say over and over and you're really adamant about this, not wanting to be called a self-made man. Can you talk about why that's so important to you for people to know? Well, just imagine if I'm sitting here by myself, does that work? I don't think so. So the only reason that it works is because this place is packed. The only way a movie works is if the theater is packed with people. I can have the best movie in the world, but what does it matter if there's no one going to see the movie? How can I do the movie if I don't have a director directing me? How can I do a movie without the cameramen filming me? How can I do a movie with the wardrobe people not dressing me and saying, "This the kind of clothes you have to wear"? Or the sword master showing me how to make the moves with the sword when they "Conan the Barbarian"? All my training partners that I had in bodybuilding, Franco Colombu and Austrian Kurt Marnul and those kind of guys? Joe Weider, that brought me to America? So it's like unbelievable if you think about the kind of help that I got. And then when I became governor, 5.8 million people voted for me. I didn't make myself governor. So how can I ever say I'm a self-made man? It's a stupid thing to say, "I'm a self-made man." I would never say that because you got to look in the mirror and says, "Arnold, you're the luckiest son of a bitch alive. You have had so much help from your parents on, to your teachers and coaches, and everyone up until now." In the movie business, look at all of my movies, the best movies ever, the greatest directors. I mean, imagine doing "Twins" without Ivan Reitman directing it, or to two "Twins" without Danny DeVito there, you'd have no twins. It's over. So I mean, how can I say I'm self-made? So this is just, it's just, I think, it's something I feel very strongly about, and I want to remind people that it is very important that we recognize the fact that we are products of a lot of help. And why is that important? For one reason, and that is that you then have to also feel obligated and have the responsibility to help others. See, it keeps going on and on and on. To me, the greatest thing is when actors come to me and say, "Can you mentor me? Can you be my mentor? I have difficulty with this, I have difficulty with that." I say, "Absolutely." I say, "Clint Eastwood did the same thing with me. He taught me, I could ask him all the questions." Or Max von Sydow, James Earl Jones, with Kirk Douglas. I worked with all of these people. I say, "They taught me about show business and what to expect. So I wanna do the same back." So this is why I think it is so important to recognize that we are not self-made and that we are a creation. Like Hillary Clinton Rodham said, "It takes a village to raise a kid," and this is exactly what it is. I think that theme is really important tonight. You've said you're a shareholder in Dimensional, fantastic. And I think it's really important to recognize that this room is a symbol of that. As you know, Dimensional doesn't have a retail business. We don't talk to the end investor. We have financial professionals, institutions, wealth managers, financial advisors, private banks who sit between us and the investor. If we're gonna change the world, which is exactly why you trusted David Booth, that was the vision, change the world by giving people a better, more defensible financial experience. We need all these people in the audience. Dimensional doesn't do that alone. So it's incredibly powerful to have that theme here tonight. I really appreciate that. I wanna get to the book before we end tonight, because I think this is, I wasn't expecting it to tie so well to this quote that you have in the book, "Nothing sells better than a true story from a genuine person." And if you haven't read the book, "Be Useful," you will, you will each get a copy, a signed copy. It's an amazing, amazing read. I can't tell you how active I was underlining things. So many, so many lessons in there. When you think about genuine people and your journey to this point, are there some people that come to mind that were really helpful to you? People that you just look back and respect tremendously for how genuine they were? Well, I mean, I had idols, and Ronald Reagan was one of my idols. Reg Park, the guy that played Hercules in the movies was one of my idols. Very genuine person. Nelson Mandela was one of my idols. I promoted in South Africa Special Olympics, and he took me to his prison cell at Robben Island. And we lit a torch in there that we then took outside of this prison cell, outside to light the torch for the Special Olympians. Wow. And very, very powerful thing, right? So I spent, you know, days with him together. Wonderful man. I respected him because his strength and his sense of forgiveness for what white people did to him, and then say, "No, we are not gonna pay them back. We are gonna go and unite and bring South Africa back." I mean, it was just unbelievable. Or Gorbachev. I mean, I was very lucky to meet Gorbachev in the early 90s in Los Angeles, and then stayed in touch with him. Met him in Germany here, then went to visit him in Moscow. And even just before he passed away, I visited him again. And I mean, think about that, when you talk about courage, to grow up under communism and then work your way up, and then as you get closer to the top, you realize this stupid system doesn't work. And then even he becomes president, he goes and dismantles the whole thing. I mean, who has the balls to do that? Think about that. I mean, that takes so much courage. So to me something like that is like, I mean, I don't even find the right words for a man like that. This is how great he is. And so people like that, my father-in-law, I remember that when I met Maria, she brought me home, and I was always hanging out with Eunice Kennedy Schriver that started Special Olympics, and with her husband, with Sergeant Shriver, who started the Peace Corps, the Job Corps, legal aid to the poor. And the list goes on and on. I mean, a genius public servant, Democrat, but it doesn't matter, I still wanted to know, "Where does this come from, this idea?" Now his idea was always the government is the solution. So that's the difference between Republicans and Democrats, in general, that, I believe, that government is only a new way. They screw up everything. The private sector is really the solution to everything. And so I don't trust government, I've seen it firsthand and all stuff. But Sargent Shriver was a big believer in government. He worked in the Kennedy Administration, in the Johnson Administration, and did extraordinary stuff. So I wanted to know exactly, how does he come up with those great ideas and all this stuff? Even though he was a Democrat. And they liked me because even though I was a Republican, every time I went to Washington and visited them, they brought over a bunch of Republican senators, Congress people, just so that I have Republican colleagues there and can hang out with. So that's the way they were, very inclusive. No one was the enemy. And so he was, Sargent Shriver was also one of my mentors, and someone that I thought was really genuine, and that was really able to sell his stuff. That's why he was so eloquent in speaking because he could speak off the cuff, because he was the real deal. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's a difference when you have to kind of read everything off a paper because you don't really believe in what you're saying or you just say it. And so, Sargent was one of those guys. So I had a lot of great mentors and the people that I believed in 100%, and they proved very helpful for me. What an adventure with all those people. Yeah, please. The title of the book is "Be Useful." So direct, so to the point. We've talked about the opportunity that we all have in this room to change the landscape for people in Austria. We already have it going strong with friends from Germany. Do you have some key points you'd like people to keep in mind as they're reading through "Be Useful" in the ways that they can be useful in their domain? No, I think, enjoy the read when you get the book. I think that you will totally understand a lot of the stuff I'm talking about. And because I talk a lot about what happened in Austria and how I grew up, and how that was very helpful for my, the rest of the life. And I think that what I talked about is, you know, the key point, always have a vision, don't listen to the naysayers, work your ass off, which is a very important part. There's no shortcuts, there is no magic pill. It's all crap. It is hard work. The more time you spend on it, the better you will get. It's that simple. I mean, I have, when I went to America, I went to college, I trained for bodybuilding competition, I worked on construction, I was a bricklayer, did bricklaying jobs with my friends, so we made some money, because in bodybuilding there was no money. And I was doing all of that at the same, and having a mail order business. I ran a mail order business where I sell booklets on how to build the big biceps and how to build the chest and how to build the deltoids like a fortress and all this kind of stuff. But anyway, so I did all of that because I figured out a way of only sleeping six hours a day, and the rest of the time I worked. School, homework, work, workout for the competitions, all that stuff. So work, work, work. So this is why when someone says to me that I don't have time for this and I don't have time for that, it's all a bunch of nonsense, because all you have to do is just analyze the time that you spent and where do you waste time. So there's, every one of us can always take out an extra hour somewhere and then use that hour wisely. I mean just imagine that you go and take one hour and study history one hour a day. Imagine in one year how smart you are about history. You can talk to any, at any party, at any gathering, or whatever, about anything after one year. So this is just how powerful it is when we take this little moment. Or you work out and you make a commitment and say, "Okay, it's January now, by the end of this year, I'm gonna go and have lost 20 pounds. I'm gonna be more muscular, and I'm gonna have my doctor be proud of me." So many of the lessons, so many of the themes, this idea of a grand vision, a really clear vision of working hard every day toward that vision, of finding joy in the process, of making progress towards your vision, what you just talked about, studying one hour a day is the power of compounding, right? These small incremental differences make a massive difference in the long term. These are all concepts that are appropriate for what we all do here in the room. Absolutely incredible takeaways in this book. Well, I started with my introduction to you saying that you're a hometown hero and a global icon. I think I'm gonna add a professor, a teacher, a counselor. And we really appreciate all that you've taught us here tonight. Please, everybody, a warm, warm thank you for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a great pleasure. Danke. Danke.