Evan Carmichael breaks down Arnold Schwarzenegger's 10 rules for success, from winning Mr. Olympia seven times to becoming a multi-hundred-million-dollar entrepreneur. Arnold turned his accent and outsider status into assets, worked harder than everyone else, and ignored people who said he couldn't jump from bodybuilding to acting to politics.
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He won the Mr. Universe contest when he was 20 and the Mr. Olympia contest 7 times. He is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He's been an athlete, actor, entrepreneur, director, model, and politician. He's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and here are his 10 rules for success.
Here's the goal, and whatever it takes to get there, I will do. So I was doing my daily work, cleaning the guns and going to the shooting range. Marching 20 miles a day and crawling around up hills with weapons. Running at 5 in the morning with heavy combat boots and all of this stuff. And when everyone just almost drops dead at night, is totally exhausted, I worked out 3 hours and got up early in the morning again to do my sit-ups and my push-ups and my chin-ups. There was a clear conflict, a dilemma, because the lifting was not a traditional sport for them. They didn't like the idea. They didn't even have the equipment. I had to go and figure out every way possible to do dips between chairs or to the bar across two chairs into upside-down rowing. Everyone would say this is the wrong direction that I'm going, or I'm in a dream world, that I'm useless. Whatever it was, I said, "I'm gonna break through that no matter what it takes." I needed to reach that goal. That vision that I had of being a world champion. Think big, because then you're going to get big. Then you're going to go and achieve big things. That is the most important thing. You know, we don't achieve big things by accident. So shoot for the top, shoot for the sky, shoot for the, you know, for the stars.
All of those liabilities that they talked about started turning into assets. When I did Conan the Barbarian, the director came to me and he said, "If we wouldn't have you, we would have had to build one." And on Terminator, the director said, "I couldn't imagine to have anyone play Terminator that wouldn't have an accent and that wouldn't have your body. I cannot imagine the line 'I'll be back' with a normal American accent. It works so perfectly that you have this German accent." So all of those things that they say the liabilities became an asset. The moment, as moment went on, it grew and grew, and I went from one movie to the next, started making more and more money, and then I ended up being the highest-paid actor with $30 million on Terminator 3.
Damals, wie das eben war, Bodybuilding in dem Sinn hat es ja eigentlich nicht gegeben. Und wir Jungs haben damals immer gesagt: Geh Arnold! Wenn du träumst, leg dich nieder. Von den Eltern aus, das war ja eigentlich nicht sehr erwünscht.
My father, he said, this is an embarrassment to me, and was dumping all over me. The other thing is that you got to work your butt off. If you think that you're going to go and accomplish something really special and be the best in anything in the world, and you think you can do it without working, you make a big mistake. Because no matter what I did, if it was in bodybuilding or in acting, or if it is in the political arena, it always took a lot, a lot of work. And you got to put out, and you got to, you know, sometimes make a lot of sacrifices in order to— if you're not willing to work hard, forget about it. So there's another rule that is very important.
Use your power of potential and make this nation and this world a better place. It worked for this immigrant that came over here to this country with $20 in the pocket And I know and I guarantee it will work for you too.
I said I wanted to get into acting. People said, "No, you have an accent and you have a body that is too big and your name no one can pronounce." Be realistic. It's the '70s. Today, Dustin Hoffman, he's the big shot.
Al Pacino, little guys. Woody Allen, sex symbol. Even when I ran for governor, they said, "Are you kidding me?
I mean, you can never win.
Give it up." But I didn't pay any attention because I said to myself, "What did I do when they said you can't go to Germany, you can't compete in the Junior Mr.
Europe, that I did not listen to the no? I went and it worked out." And I used that attitude as a blueprint for the rest of my life. Don't be afraid to fail. Because if you're afraid to fail, then you're always holding yourself back because you're afraid that if you go all out, you may fail. Well, in weightlifting, we learned that very quickly. The only way you could break a record is if you're willing to fail. That's when you put on more weight, you try it, sometimes you maybe don't— you would not be able to lift it, which has happened to me many times. But eventually when you train hard enough, you will lift it. So don't be afraid to fail. I mean, how far can you fall? In Austria, kids were conditioned to follow the parents' path. But unlike other kids around me, I was very determined that I have to get out of there. And then one day I saw the COVID of a magazine of Reg Park. And it says, "How Mr. Universe became Hercules." I opened up this magazine and I read through it. And there was the whole plan laid out. I asked myself, Arnold, what is it about you that is so different? Why are you the only one that sees it so clearly, this goal? Going to America and winning the Mr. Universe contest and getting into movies and making millions of dollars. No one else talks about this around here.
Is it real?
Is it just a crazy fantasy? But wait a minute, Reg Park did it. Then it's possible. Arnold, focus. The key thing is to be focused. Visualize your goal. And I saw myself standing up there on the stage just like Reg Park, and it became more and more clear. Arnold, you got to go.
That just shows you again, so much for it can't be done. This is why I try to tell you anything and everything can It can be done if you can visualize it and if you believe in yourself. It was the same thing again when I ran for governor. You can imagine when I went on The Tonight Show and I announced that I'm gonna run for governor of the great state of California, people came to me afterwards and said, "You're crazy. You don't announce something like this on The Tonight Show. You have an official press conference at the state capitol. Plus, you don't start with governorship. You go through the We start first with mayor or with state senator. And I said, I don't want to be senator, I don't want to be mayor, I want to be governor. Don't you understand that? Well, the rest is history. I won in 2003 and I won also in 2006. Let me tell you, you're going to find the naysayers in every turn that you make. Don't listen. Just visualize your goal, know exactly where you want to go. Trust yourself. Get out there and work like hell. And break some of the rules and never, ever be afraid of failure.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Daniel Grantham asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile and you want to see a top 10 list of, leave their name in the comments below and I'll see what I can do for you. Now Arnold likes to talk a lot about how important it is to have a clear goal to set out and achieve for yourself. So my question of the day for you today is, what is your clear goal? What is a clear goal that you are trying to work towards to build that life and that business for yourself? Leave it in the comments, I'd love to hear from you. And of course, if you like this video, you want to see more, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter and to the channel. And I hope to again see you tomorrow morning for another shot of entrepreneurship to kickstart your day. Thank you for watching, continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.
