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

Brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim high-yield savings account, Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover https://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement. Arnold Schwarzenegger (@schwarzenegger https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger) is an Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor, businessman, philanthropist, bestselling author, and politician. He served as the thirty-eighth governor of California. His new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life https://www.amazon.com/Be-Useful-Seven-Tools-Life/dp/0593655958/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, is out October 10th, and his daily email newsletter Pump Club https://arnoldspumpclub.com/ recently hit more than 500,000 subscribers and continues to grow as a positive corner of the Internet. Schwarzenegger has made it his mission to give back. Since his time in the Governor’s house, he’s been working diligently to combat climate change, anti-semitism, ensure fair voting practices, help youth, work with Veterans, and inspire healthy living. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim! I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, you’ll get a 1-year supply of Vitamin D free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive your 1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive daily, foundational nutrition supplement that supports whole-body health. * This episode is also brought to you by Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/tim! Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.80% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Cash Account http://wealthfront.com/tim. That’s more than eleven times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.8% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you’ll get an extra fifty-dollar bonus http://wealthfront.com/tim with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim http://wealthfront.com/tim to get started. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. Go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. * [06:37] Recovering from heart surgery. [11:19] Age 10 entrepreneurship. [15:38] Arnold's dad and the importance of being useful. [21:02] Arnold and his brother: same upbringing, different outcomes. [27:53] Building ladders and never thinking small. [34:49] When Arnold's self-bet to be a comedic lead paid off. [41:26] We're all in sales. [46:43] The significance of shifting gears. [50:24] Grieving Franco Columbu. [54:53] Aging. [1:02:17] Arnold's current state of self-identity. [1:05:07] What Arnold hopes readers take away from Be Useful. [1:12:18] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, Margaret Atwood https://tim.blog/2022/02/22/margaret-atwood/, Mark Zuckerberg https://tim.blog/2022/03/24/mark-zuckerberg/, Peter Thiel https://tim.blog/2014/09/09/peter-thiel/, Dr. Gabor Maté https://tim.blog/2018/02/20/gabor-mate/, Anne Lamott https://tim.blog/2021/07/09/anne-lamott/, Sarah Silverman https://tim.blog/2022/01/12/sarah-silverman/, Dr. Andrew Huberman https://tim.blog/2021/07/06/andrew-huberman/, and many more. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat is my personal nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, pulling the back on, putting one leg on top and repeating all of that ad nauseam. But now I am falling asleep in record time. Why? Because I'm using a device that was recommended to me by friends called the Pod Cover by Eight Sleep. The Pod Cover fits on any mattress and allows you to adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment, providing the optimal temperature that gets you the best night's sleep. With the Pod Cover's dual-zone temperature control, you and your partner can set your sides of the bed to as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees.

• 0:41Tim Ferriss?

  I think generally in my experience, my partners prefer the high side and I like to sleep very, very cool. So stop fighting, this helps. Based on your biometrics, environment and sleep stages, the Pod Cover makes temperature adjustments throughout the night that limit wake-ups and increase your percentage of deep sleep. In addition to its best-in-class temperature regulation, the Pod Cover sensors also track your health and sleep metrics without the need to use a wearable. So go to eightsleep.com/tim, all spelled out, eightsleep.com/tim and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. That's eightsleep.com/tim. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada and the UK, select countries in the EU and Australia.

• 1:22Tim Ferriss?

  Again, that's eightsleep.com/tim to save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover.

• 1:31Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole-body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller, more than a decade ago, The Four Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I simply loved the product and felt like it was the ultimate nutritionally-dense supplement that you could use conveniently while on the run, which is, for me, a lot of the time. I have been using it a very, very long time indeed. And I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases.

• 2:14Tim Ferriss?

  I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? What is this stuff? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. Since 2010, they have improved the formula 52 times in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible, using rigorous standards and high-quality ingredients. How many ingredients? 75. And you would be hard-pressed to find a more nutrient-dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral, superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an antioxidant immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help

• 3:00Tim Ferriss?

  manage stress. Now, I do my best, always, to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So, part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So, each morning, AG1. That's just, like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sport, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful

• 3:43Tim Ferriss?

  levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 4:19Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half-mile before my hands start shaking.

• 4:24Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  No, we're just seeing an appropriate time.

• 4:29Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to attempt to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types. And my guest today doesn't really need an introduction, but I'll lead into it this way, and I'm going to keep my preamble short. The world's greatest bodybuilder, the world's highest-paid movie star, the leader of the world's sixth-largest economy, these are all the same person. Sounds like the setup to a joke, but this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And for those who don't know, he is an Austrian-born bodybuilder, actor, businessman, philanthropist, bestselling author, and politician. He served as the 38th

• 5:23Tim Ferriss?

  governor of California. His new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, is out October 10, and his daily newsletter, that's email newsletter, Pump Club, recently passed 500,000 subscribers and is growing quickly as a positive corner of the internet. Schwarzenegger has made it his mission to give back since his time in the governor's house. He's been working heavily to combat climate change, antisemitism, ensure fair voting practices, help youth work with veterans, and inspire healthy living, among other things. Now, if you want, in addition to all of that, some footage of his incredible accuracy with killing flies, his shepherding of various animals around the property, including pigs and dogs, you can go to my YouTube channel,

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  that's youtube.com/timferriss. You can find him on social, at Schwarzenegger, that's on Twitter, Instagram. TikTok is at Arnold Schnitzel, on YouTube, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The website for the book is beusefulbook.com, and the newsletter is arnoldspumpclub.com. And without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 6:37Tim Ferriss?

  We've talked about a lot the last few times that we've spoken, but I'd love to chat maybe about the heart surgery and your recovery from the heart surgery, which I think might be perhaps an inspiring place to start for a lot of people. Would you mind just describing the heart surgery and what the recovery has looked like for yourself?

• 6:58Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Well, I think that you're referring to the most recent one, which was 2018. That was when I just went into a routine, non-invasive aortic valve replacement, but it goes through your arteries on your arm, neck, and then your growings into your heart, and then they replace your valve. And it's a standard procedure that they have now in the last 10 years, and you don't have to perform open-heart surgeries anymore because of it. It just happens to be that in my case, they had a difficult time somehow, and they poked through the hard wall with the cable. And so I got internal bleeding, and they now had to perform an emergency

• 7:42Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  open-heart surgery. I, of course, was not aware of any of that because I was out. The next thing I know is I wake up, and I'm really happy, and this is over, only to find out that I was having a breathing tube in my throat, and I couldn't talk. And I saw three doctors in front of me, not smiling, but kind of having a concerned look on their face. One said, "Don't try to talk because you can't. You still have a breathing tube in your mouth, and we're gonna pull that out right away now, so just stay with us." Okay, one, two, three. And then I was like,

• 8:20Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  so I was breathing heavy, and someone ripped that breathing tube out of my mouth. And then the second doctor said, "We are so sorry." Arnold, but something went wrong with the valve replacement and we had to perform open heart surgery. So I digested all that and also that the breathing tube was just ripped out of my kind of throat and lungs. So I'm still kind of not saying anything, I just looked staring at them. And the next doctor says, yeah, it's like sixteen hours later now since you were first put down. So now we are keeping you awake and everything hopefully will be fine. The most important thing is now for you to make it through the first night because that's

• 9:01Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  usually when you can have pneumonia and where things go south. I'm just gotten out of an open heart surgery where it could have cost my life and now they're telling me that this next night or two is very crucial so I don't lose my life. So I said, what the hell is that? What kind of a deal that I'm going to get into here? I had to kind of connect quickly, shift gears and realize what has happened, which takes you a while because you're on drugs and you're on medication and you're still under anesthesia somewhat and you're not with the program. So I also slowly started getting with the program. I had to kind of shift gears and realize that the simplest things were impossible to do. Couldn't go to the bathroom, I couldn't get up, I couldn't do this, do that.

• 9:42Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And then slowly I started getting with the program, started pulling out the tubes during the night and they started adjusting this and adjusting that. And then eventually I was able to go and get up a little bit. So now the doctor said, the key thing is to walk because if you walk, then you exercise your lungs and when you exercise your lungs, the danger of having pneumonia starts really slipping away and you don't have to worry about that. But the key thing that kills you always is the least amount of lung activities that you have can create, you know, this problem and you die with pneumonia. And so I was, I was setting goals for myself, okay, I'm gonna go and walk around the bed right away, I'm gonna get up, have someone pull along the machines.

• 10:26Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Then after I walked around the bed, I sat down again, relaxed a little bit, then I went outside to do this and so I got to make it outside the room and I started going outside the room and back in again and outside the room, back in again and started doing exercises like that. Eventually, I was walking around the nurse's station. And then eventually, two days later, I was walking down the long hallways over to another building and back, which was like hundreds of yards. So I could really build up strength and get out of that hospital as quick as possible. And so after six days, rather than what they thought, seven days, after six days, I got out of the hospital and I was exercising and I was walking.

• 11:06Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And I asked friends of mine that were working out with me to put the pressure on me and my family, my kids, they were like, put the pressure on me to make me walk and do not let me get away with not walking. And so that's exactly what we did.

• 11:20Tim Ferriss?

  So you've always seemingly been very good at setting goals, having a vision and then setting these intermediate goals. I'd like to rewind the clock because I was trying to find some aspects of your life that we haven't explored already. And this is going to go back to age ten. So age ten, roughly, is it true that you were selling ice cream at the time? I think there are ice cream pops or some type of ice cream. You can't believe everything you read on the internet, but I did find that. And I'm wondering if that was one of your first experiences with entrepreneurship, or at least trying to make money by selling something.

• 11:51Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You're absolutely correct. And it was not that I wanted to become an entrepreneur or anything like this at that point. What it was, was just really a necessity. You know, I felt like I needed a training suit. Friends of mine had training suits in the winter and, you know, tennis shoes. And my parents refused to buy it, you know, they just would give me my leather hose and, you know, the pants that they wore day and night and, and in the winter and in the summer. And then some high shoes, boots, just clothes that would work all the time, but nothing fancy. And so I wanted to have, and I go to the soccer field, I want to have a training suit. So they said, well, you go out and make your own money, that's fine, you can buy your own stuff. But you definitely, you're not going to get it for us because that's not the kind of money that you have.

• 12:36Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  That's exactly what I did. So I went downstairs to the lake where I grew up, where I learned how to swim. And I asked, there was a ice cream and dessert kiosk in front of the big restaurant.

• 12:49Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Right near the lake. So I asked him, I said, do you have anything that where I can go and put ice in it? And then carry it back there where the people are lying around in the middle of the grass and the bushes? And all around the lake that they're too lazy maybe to come to the front here and buy the ice cream here? And you know, have it melt on the way back there and it's gone already. So I said, there is some people, I think, this was maybe the entrepreneurial kind of mentality. Cause I felt kind of there is maybe a need for someone like to deliver the ice cream to those bushes. And those different locations around the lake, rather than have them to go, have those people go all the way to the front to get the ice cream. And so I did not know, but I thought that maybe it would be interesting idea, let's try it.

• 13:34Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So I would just take a little box that the guy gave me was like some kind of a container. Where you normally put water in it, some rounds kind of a container. And with a handle on it. And he put in ice from the winter that they, when they just cut the ice in the winter on that lake. They used it in that restaurant below for keeping, because there was no refrigeration yet. Keeping the drinks, the beer and the vegetables and everything cold. So they had broken ice, huge amount of broken ice in the bottom of that restaurant. And so the guy had in his trunk, yeah, where the ice cream was, this ice in it. So he gave me a little bit for my container. And then he put in twenty ice creams.

• 14:16Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  They were like, you know, just icicles, so that there's bars. And he put those in there, a little bit of cell phone, it's a little kind of paper with. And so I ran with those around the lake. And I said, you know, ice cream, ice cream, fresh ice cream, ice cream. And then it was often someone would pop up and say, yeah, I want some ice cream. And then I would go over to the bush and there would be three guys like the girl. So they says, give me four ice cream, I'll give four. So then next to four. So by the time I was like a hundred yards gone, I already was out of ice cream from my pocket. So I'd run back to the front again, get more ice cream and go back out again. Then eventually I just took a hundred with me, you know, and there was enough ice underneath so to keep it cold. That hot day was around thirty, thirty five degrees.

• 15:01Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And so I uh sold this ice cream and then the end of the day, I ended up what this guy gave me one shilling for each ice cream. So I sold like a hundred and forty five, a hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty ice creams and somebody a hundred and eighty shilling. So that got me enough money to buy myself a training suit. Then the next weekend I will go back and I will buy myself with the money and some tennis shoes and stuff like that. And so this is kind of how I started to realize that if you work your ass off, you can really accomplish a lot of things. That's why my book, you know, be useful. I put in there, this is a main chapter is just work your ass off.

• 15:38Tim Ferriss?

  Work your ass off. We're definitely directly going to segue to be useful. Seven Tools for Life, this title, Be Useful. Could you explain, and that's probably ties into similar chapters around the story, around earning money and working your ass off in your younger years. Where did this title come from, Be Useful?

• 16:00Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  It comes from my father, you know, he would always say that. And his whole attitude always was, whatever you do, try to serve the people, try to do something good for your community or for your family. Don't just think about yourself. That's why my father was so heavily kind of against bodybuilding. Because he felt like that what he was called, this is self thrown on, self thrown on. Which means you're kind of glorifying and you're treating yourself rather than worrying about others. And so he just thought like he says, instead of lifting for yourself, why don't you go out and chop some wood? Why don't you go and shuffle some coal? And this way you help some older person that has coal delivered.

• 16:42Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Shuffle coal into their basement so they have coal in the winter and they have wood in the winter. And you help an older person that doesn't, that is not able to do those things anymore. That's what you should do. Then you get also muscles, then you also get strong. Then you also can kind of look good. Look at this guy's like Laszlo Pop. Laszlo Pop is a boxer from Hungary. He was the European champion in boxing. But how does he train? He does pictures all over the place where he's chopping. In wood in the forests. I said, that's how he trained. That's how he becomes a world boxing champion. He doesn't just think about his boxing, he thinks about other people too. So there was this rap. And so he says, you gotta be useful, you know, you gotta go and use your talent to help people.

• 17:24Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And so that's where it kind of came from. And it's something that was really interesting because I think you and I, we talked about that in the past. That sometimes things come to you as a kid, but then later on in life, it kind of comes back. It's like kind of you're like that six o'clock in the morning and you want to stay in bed and you say, you say, wait a minute. I heard his voice from my father screaming, be useful. You know, people have never accomplished anything. No country ever was built by people sleeping in, you know. Austria was not built by people sleeping in. America was not built by people sleeping in. People struggled, people suffered, people worked their asses off to build this country. So you want to go now and sleep in.

• 18:04Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So then you start feeling guilty and you just jump out of bed right away because you hear the sounds, they come back. And it's kind of motivational because it really has driven me my whole life and has pushed me. So this is, you know, that's why I called the book Be Useful, because it's kind of an overall title. And then within that book, I put all the chapters in there. Never think small or work your ass off. Or sell, sell, sell and all of those kind of things shift gears or whatever it is. You know, I've put this kind of lessons together, which were very crucial lessons that I've learned. Throughout my life and throughout the various different careers, but especially in the gym. Most of my lessons I learned in the gym because there's no better place than to learn in the gym.

• 18:45Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Because this is where, you know, the rubber hits the road, right? I mean, this is where if you don't do the forced reps. If you don't work until it burns and until it hurts, and then you go beyond that and do the forced reps, you're not gonna grow. So now you get this message that only through pain you can actually grow. Only through pain you can go and discomfort and misery, you can kind of grow as also as a person. Not just physically, not just muscle wise, but as a person. Through comfort, no one ever grows, you know, the only guy can grow through. Confident going through you know, things where you have to have discipline and where you struggle. If it's in the military, if it is in a really good job, or if he's studying in the university.

• 19:29Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  The more this kid's struggling and study all night and goes through hardship, the further they're gonna go. Look at the students that goes to medical college, how many night, sleepless nights they have in orders. So this is what it takes.

• 19:41Tim Ferriss?

  How did your father say be useful in German? What is the way to say that properly or how would he say to you?

• 19:48Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Well, he would have different versions of it. He would just say hart arbeiten.

• 19:52Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. Right.

• 19:53Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, work hard. Helfe andere.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  Help others.

• 19:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, it was always like, you know, help others, you know, don't just interested in yourself. So it was kind of like a combination of all of those things that he was through together. And he would just always, you know, kind of like be very critical of people that didn't do that. My father's job was a police officer. He was with the Schändermarie, which was the country police. It was all about protecting people and keeping law and order. So that's serving the people. And the same is when, when you talk about music. Music is to entertain people. So his whole thing about learning to play music and play six instruments. The trumpet, the fling one, the saxophone, the clarinet. All of these different, you know, instruments. It made him a great performer. He wrote music, he conducted music.

• 20:41Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So it was all about what can you do for other people? So he would go to the city park out there and he would have concerts, he would play concerts. He would play in funerals. A police officer died, he would always play at the funerals and direct the music, conduct the music and all of that stuff. So he was always interested in serving the people. So he was really into that.

• 21:03Tim Ferriss?

  Arnold, when I think about you, the adjective that comes to mind, I was asking myself this question earlier today. That the adjective that comes to mind for me is resilient. And many people have seen the Netflix mini series Arnold. And one of the lines, and I'm not going to get this perfectly right, that stuck out to me was that your upbringing made you but broke your brother. And I'm probably getting the phrasing off a little bit, but I'm wondering if you could just elaborate on that and speak to what the upbringing was like and then also what made you different from your brother? In that respect.

• 21:36Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  My brother was by nature more fragile. And I never really realized that when I kind of grew up. But just the very fact, certain things that kind of unfolded made me then realize that. And there was two things. One of them was that he was more fragile. And the other one was that he appeared to be more fragile. And that I appeared to be stronger. And the reason I'm saying that is because like, for instance, when he was like eleven years old and he was going to school in Graz outside the village and he had to go with the bus there. Then he had to be picked up at the bus station a half an hour away from our house. And then it was night in the window in the fall. And then he was afraid to go home.

• 22:20Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  He would say, I'm afraid to go home by myself. And so my father would turn to me and says, Arnold, can you pick him up? I give you a shilling every night till you pick him up. So maybe gonna end of the week, five shillings. Because on Saturday, there's only half day school. So he would go home at a time when it was still light. So I said to him, oh, yeah, yeah, I pick him up. No problem. He says, you're not afraid? I said, you're kidding me, no. But in the meantime, I was also scared shitless. So I appeared tougher than my brother, but I was also afraid. But I was not afraid enough not to go. So I did go, even though I was afraid. My brother refused to go because he was afraid.

• 23:02Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So there was both, that I was a little tougher than him, but that I also pretended to be tougher than him. And so that kind of unfolded as time went on. So as we were punished and beaten and all of this kind of things that was going on. It was clear that my brother couldn't quite handle the thing because he ran away more often from home. Well, not only more often ran away, because I never ran away. He ran away and he would not appear sometimes for a week. My father would have to look for him all over the place. He was scared that he got lost, is he gone or what is going on? So it freaked him out. And he treated him for a while when he came back home. He treated him for a while nicer and then started getting to be again too much for him.

• 23:47Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So what happened was really, when I look back was that each time a father punished us, it made my brother more and more vulnerable and weaker. And it made me stronger. So I thrived. My mind started gearing up to, I'm gonna get back at him. I'm gonna leave this house as soon as I can. I'm gonna be out of here with the age of eighteen. I'm gonna go to the military and then I'm gonna go and get my passport. And then I'm gonna go to Germany and then I'm gonna go to America and I'm gonna be out of here. This is it. I'm not gonna take this any longer. And it would make me stronger and really set a program and set a goal and a vision of what I'm gonna do in life.

• 24:32Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Whereas my brother, Crumble, he got weaker. He started drinking. He started getting involved in alcohol. And I could see in his behavior that he didn't behave well. He was abusive and eventually he died because of a car accident, drunk driving. With the age of, he was, I think, twenty-four and I was twenty-three when that happened. I was already in America at that time. But it was like, it was really sad because I could see that he just could not handle any more punishment. And I could. I was thriving on it and I used it to my big plus and as a support system. And it was like, gave me the motivation.

• 25:12Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  It created the fire in the belly. It made me create a vision, a necessary vision. This is what I wanna do. I wanna get to America. I have to become a bodybuilding champion. I have to get away from home. I had to find my new father figure. My father was great to be the father, the official father. But there were others, the trainer in the weightlifting club, Kurt Manuel and Mui. There was a guy that could now, that we also knew that was in his forties and fifties, that became a father figure, very smart guy that spoke English and was very worldly. And then there was a Jewish fellow there that became our kind of mentor and helped us with the weightlifting club. So this all became kind of my new father figures in a way.

• 25:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And then eventually Joe Weider, when I came to America. And all of these people, I looked up right over his title because they would treat me in a better way. And they would educate me and they would really usher me along and nurture me along. Really resented my father because of it. I always kind of felt that he served a really extraordinary purpose for me. Not for my brother, but for me, which means to get me to America, become a great champion, to have that will, be able to work no matter how many hours it takes, to do no matter what it takes. And do not shy away from misery or from pain or from obstacles

• 26:39Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  or from falling down and having to get up again and crawl and offer for nothing. And that was the power and the strength my father gave me. And so I always kind of appreciated that. And nothing comes in the perfect package. Because I knew that if he would have given me all the love and if he would have not done none of that. And if I would have had all the money in the world, I would have not grown up as tough. And I would not have been able to accomplish what I did, coming to America and becoming this world bodybuilding champion. And do all the things that I was doing. It was all because of that upbringing. And so when I look at, for instance, my in-laws. You know, when I see those kids, they're very smart kids, the Kennedy family.

• 27:23Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  But I always felt kind of like they couldn't have grown up. Like Maria or Maria's brothers or anyone around them, they couldn't have grown up. Or my children couldn't grow up with the same desire and the same hunger. But they can get other qualities. So that's the key thing to focus on that. But I mean, you could never have that quality of hunger and desire and deep inside, kind of like reach, being able to reach inside no matter what it takes.

• 27:54Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about one of the rules, never think small. You seem like the walking archetype of not thinking small. You've lived multiple lifetimes compared to most people. How would you suggest people think of never think small? Or what stories come to mind that from your life exemplify? That.

• 28:13Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Just the very beginning. I mean, for me to go and say, I want to compete in the junior Mr. Europe competition, rather than just in the Mr. Austria competition. I trained just as hard as everyone else in the gym. The goal was just smaller. They said, I want to be Mr. Austria. And I said, I want to be Mr. Europe. So I'm gonna start with Mr. Junior, Junior Mr. Europe, the best built man of Europe. I'm gonna go to this competition. And I was thinking bigger. And I was training as hard as they were. Everything was the same. But then when I won that competition, because I had a very clear vision, that's what I want to win. That immediately launched me into getting a job, become a trainer in Munich in a bodybuilding gymnasium. Now imagine, how in heaven is that? You're a young bodybuilder,

• 28:58Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  you're eighteen years old, you just won your first international competition, you win some local competitions in Austria, you win some powerlifting competitions, some weightlifting competitions, but now you're Junior Mr. Europe, and you have this trophy. And now you're getting a job to train in the second biggest gym in Munich. So that was like absolute heaven. So with nineteen, I started training, become the trainer in the gym. So now I had the opportunity to train day and night. When I wake up, because I was sleeping in the gym, I was waking up and I was training, I was taking a nap in the afternoon, I was training, before going to sleep at night after dinner, I was training, I was training

• 29:41Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  day and night. So this is a dream. But it was all because I felt big. They were still stuck working for some bath house in Austria, or for the government, or being a trash collector, or being a teacher, or something like that. They were still stuck in the same job. I was already moving on to Munich, and I was already a trainer in a bodybuilding gymnasium, making this the launchpad to America, which was my ultimate dream. So this is what I'm saying. So it didn't take more work to think big. It's just thinking big makes you bigger. And what my point is, is it takes just as much effort. And I learned again from bodybuilding.

• 30:22Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  From that kind of thing, I learned that don't hold back. So when I went within age of nineteen, I was the youngest Mr. Universe competitor. I competed in a Mr. Universe contest. I placed second, I placed runner up. So that a year later, I went back with the age of twenty and won Mr. Universe, the youngest Mr. Universe ever. But this is all because I was thinking big. I was not saying, oh, maybe in a few years from now I go there. Or I shouldn't go there right now, or something, or it's too early, or it's. And then that's just something that I don't wait. I'm gonna go for the second Mr. Universe next year. I'm gonna go to America. I'm gonna go and make Joe Weider aware of me and, you know, make sure that I win another competition and all this. So I was driven bigger and bigger and bigger. And even when I got into acting,

• 31:07Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I didn't look at it as kind of like I'm gonna get some character roles. I wasn't interested in character roles. I wanted to be another Steve Reeves or Reg Park. They were the stars of the Hercules movies. Clint Eastwood was the star. We always cleaned Eastwood, you know, in a fistful of dollars. Cleaned Eastwood in a dollar, a few dollars more. Cleaned Eastwood in this movie. Whatever it was, it was like, that's what I wanted. Charles Bronson, I wanna be like Charles Bronson. I wanna be like Warren Beatty. I wanna be like these guys. They were the top stars. And that's what I saw myself. And they said, well, this ladder is very hard to build or to climb up to. I said, well, then I build my own ladder. I built my own ladder and then I know exactly how to get up there.

• 31:50Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  That's exactly what I did. I created my own way of getting up there. I took five hours that I learned in bodybuilding. I took five hours every day of working my ass off. To train and to train and to train and to pose and to pose and to do all the stuff that I needed to do. I said, I'm gonna do the same five hours, but I'm gonna go and learn English. I'm gonna learn acting, speech lessons, voice lessons, accent remove lessons. Well, I should get my money back for those, but in any case, but in any case, I took all of those lessons, one hour every day. And I was grinding it out. And then I remember eventually it happened. People started.

• 32:32Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Hiring me and the great thing was that I felt that I should not be financially vulnerable. So I first got into real estate and I worked my ass off in real estate. My first million actually made in real estate before I really got into acting. And that helped me because now when they came to me with stupid parts and says, do you want to play a bouncer? I said, fuck no, why would I play a bouncer? They say, well, what about a Nazi officer? You have a great, if the German accent, they said, no, I don't want to be a Nazi officer. I say, I want to be a star. I want to be a leading man. I want to get rich and famous. Just like in these with Charles Bronson and they said, you're crazy. It would never happen. Well, I applied the other rule, which is don't listen to the naysayers.

• 33:17Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So I worked my ass off. I did exactly what I did in the bodybuilding. I did in the movies. Eventually it happened. I started doing the Jane Mansfield story. I started doing the with Kirk Douglas. And Anne Margaret, the villain. I was doing Streets of San Francisco. I was doing Stay Hungry and Pumping On, all in the seventies. And even with Lucille Ball, doing Happy Anniversary and Goodbye. So I did all of those kind of things. And then that led to the big role and now I've arrived. Starring Roar and Conan the Barbarian. You know, when John Millia saw me, he says, if we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger.

• 33:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  We would have had to build one. So all of a sudden, the body that everyone said would ever, ever. Become famous in the movies because the movies, nobody sees muscle movies anymore. All of the opposite came true. My accent became very welcome. When they did Terminator, they loved the German accent. They were Jim Cameron called. Schwarzenegger is talking like a machine. That's why it worked like the Terminator. So things like that. So all of a sudden, the things that they said would never make it in Hollywood. The accent, the name, the body, all of the things became big blessings and it made it. So that's my own ladder that I built. That's why it's important.

• 34:39Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, don't just worry about climbing a ladder that someone else has built. No, build your own ladder. You know, just don't wait for anyone else. So that's what I did.

• 34:49Tim Ferriss?

  I want to underscore a few things for folks. Number one, the building of the ladder was not, many ladders was not haphazard. It was systematic. So you had the real estate as a financial buffer, which gave you then the ability to pick your shots. And you've been very good at doubling down on betting on yourself in many different areas. But could you speak to Twins and what that looked like with that particular film to bet on yourself?

• 35:18Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Well, Twins was a kind of like a little bit out of nowhere because I had certain goals, but comedy was not one of my goals when I got into movies. And I felt like I can be funny in the movies, you know, Conan, there were funny moments and all that stuff. But only when I started doing one action movie after the next, you know, my hunger, you know, the whole philosophy of staying hungry kind of came out a little bit. And I said, well, I wonder if we ever could sell the idea of me doing a comedy. And then all of a sudden I started getting obsessed with the idea. And I started talking to everyone. I said, have you ever thought about me doing a comedy? And of course, every studio executive said, are you crazy? I don't, I mean, what do you think?

• 36:03Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I'm making millions of dollars if you're being an action hero. You finally built it up to be this international action hero, not only in America, but all over the world. Why would I go and start spending money on something else that is not sure? I love the action movies. We're going to give you all the scripts for action movies. And so I said, yeah, but I understand. But what about me doing an action movie for you? And then the next one we do is a comedy. No, why would I do that? You tell me. I mean, would you do it? I said, yeah. I said, but here's the thing what we need to do. So then when we finally formed the partnership, Danny DeVito, Ivan Reitman and myself, we got together and I said, you know, I can sympathize with the studio. Why would they take the risk? For what? Why don't we all take a risk?

• 36:48Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Why don't we go to them and say, instead of us getting the big salaries, why don't we just say we do the movie for nothing? Just give us a back end. You don't have to pay us any salary whatsoever. If the product- Cost sixteen and a half million dollars. That's all you use. Not one penny more for us. Fuck us. Don't worry about us at all. We have plenty of money. And if the movie goes in the toilet, we all go in the toilet. Everyone takes risks. Not just you, the studio. Wouldn't be fair, would it? They said, hey, this is my thinking. So what do you want in return? We said, all we want is just you give us three thirty seven and a half percent of ownership of the movie.

• 37:32Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And then we all go to the bank together. If the movie goes through the roof, we all make money. The movie goes in the toilet, none of us make money. They said, we are in. That's exactly what we did. And it happened to be with Ivan Reitman's genius directing. And we tended to be the kind of great, great acting and everyone else around us, Kelly Preston and everyone else. And me being involved, we made the movie a huge hit. As a matter of fact, that movie made more money than any action movie made up until that point for me. So my action movies made always to like seventy, eighty million dollars. And that movie made a hundred and twenty eight million dollars domestically. And worldwide, two hundred and fifty million dollars.

• 38:16Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So now imagine the budget being sixteen and a half million dollars. And your box office is two hundred and fifty million. So now we own thirty seven and a half, almost forty percent of that chunk. So we all clean house. It was so fucking funny to go around. As a matter of fact, Tom Pollack, who was a fantastic studio leader, a great producer and lawyer. He, after the deal, he's just basically said, he went around the desk in his office. And he bent over and pulled out his pockets and he says, you guys fucked me. And robbed me blind. And so it was like, we were all laughing because we all were very

• 38:58Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  good friends. I mean, he was right. I mean, it like, it really because they were so worried about the risk-taking, that we said, we take the risk. And sure enough, we did. And the risk paid off. And so we just really cleaned house. So I made like, I think 70 million dollars on twins, or something like that on the end. And Danny made a fortune that he bought two houses, built two houses. So we all got kind of a lot of money. And Ivan Reifman. And so there's what deals that we did then in the future with kindergarten cop, we did it with junior, we did it. So it became a model that no one is going to do today anymore. The studios got smarter than that. But anyways, it was like historic kind of a deal. But I had the confidence that I could put it off. And Ivan had the

• 39:42Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  confidence and Danny had the confidence. And so together we all did it. And Universal Studios then had the confidence. And they promoted it really well. We hired Annie Libowitz to do the photo shoot. And she took us on top of a bus against the blue sky and just photographed Danny and me leaning against each other. And that became the poster. And it was like really genius. So everyone kind of worked together to make this a brilliant movie, the successful movie.

• 40:13Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now. A lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can. But I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings. And that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.8 APY. That's the annual percentage yield with the Wealthfront Cash Account. That's more than 11 times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to fdic.gov. So why wait?

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

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• 41:26Tim Ferriss?

  Why have an entire chapter slash rule dedicated to sell, sell, sell? Because for a lot of people, they think of selling as a dirty thing. I don't happen to think of it that way, but why is this so critical that sell, sell, sell would be one of the primary sections in the book?

• 41:43Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You can imagine the reason why I called it sell, sell, sell is because it does raise eyebrows. But it does make people say, wait a minute, selling normally is a no-no. I mean, if you think about it, most of the actors in the seventies and eighties refused to sell their movies. They said, this is not my job. I'm an artist. I don't sell. I'm not a salesman out there and all this stuff. And I, this was my strength because I studied selling, you know, when I was in career education. I started to be a salesman and so I realized then the importance of selling that no matter what you have.

• 42:23Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  If you have a podcast, if you have a movie, if you have a painting, if you have a car, a technology, a medicine, whatever it is. If people don't know about it, you have nothing. The more people that know about your product or about your talent. The more you can go and be successful. So therefore this idea of selling, publicizing, marketing, communicating, convincing. All of those kinds of things is an art and there's art agencies that make millions and millions of dollars to just figure out what the language should be in order to really sell to the right people and have the right customers and sell a product the right way.

• 43:06Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So it's an art to do that. And I've learned it way back when I was 15 years old and I learned how to. So I remember when my boss said to me, he says, now, look at, watch me carefully. When I sell, there's this couple coming in. So this couple comes in, I work in a store that had wood products and it was like a lumberyard. Then kind of hardware store, it was kind of like a hardware store type of a thing. So this couple comes in, they wanted to have tiles. And so immediately the guys started talking, and then my boss started talking to the guy and said, what kind of tiles do you want? Do you want the black tiles, or pink tiles, or white tiles? And the guy said, this is, uh, well, I don't know. So the woman said, I, we want white tiles.

• 43:47Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And for the bathroom, we want to have pink tiles. And so the guy looked at her and he says, okay, fine, let me take you over there. He said, how much tile do you need? Again, the man didn't answer, the woman answered. And she says, so I need so many, I would written down the measurements here. I need two meters by a meter eighty tall and blah, blah, blah. And so the guy then all of a sudden realized that she's the customer. So he started really paying attention to her. And asking all the questions and digging around, but included him also. And then in the end, when they were satisfied and we wrote up the order. And we then told him that it will be all delivered on Thursday. He came to me after they left, they said, so what did you learn?

• 44:28Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I said, well, I said, you really sold the tiles well and the colors and the difference between real tiles and fake tiles and all this. He says, no, but there was one other thing. I switched who I thought was the customer. He says, she was the customer, not him. He paid for it, but she was the customer. So I had to talk and address her. Because that was the important thing. She needed to be convinced. So I had to sell to her. And so I realized then that selling is an art, that you have to improvise and adjust all the time. That if you go in front of a children's audience, for instance, you have to speak a totally different language. When they're talking in a class, in a school, in after school programs, then they're talking in Washington, when they're talking to legislators.

• 45:13Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I have to talk differently when I talk to a crowd of fans at the movie theater. Then I talk to a bunch of lobbyists. So. It's always different. So you have to learn the art of selling. And this is why selling is so important. And I remember that when Andy Warhol, when I was being painted in his warehouse down in Soho. And Jamie Wires was there and Andy Warhol was there. And then he always talked about that the most important thing is that you don't just sell the art, but you sell yourself. You have to sell yourself. You have to become an interesting person. We've got parties you go to, who you hang out with, the photos that you take, the recordings that you make, the magazine that you publish.

• 45:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And all of this together, he says, makes me a character and makes people fascinated to write about me. And therefore they write about my art. And sure enough, it worked because in no time Andy Warhol's art became worth millions and millions of dollars. I used to buy it for fifty thousand dollars, thirty thousand dollars. I have the big Indian that is hanging in my office that is now, you know, ten, fifteen million dollars, about for thirty thousand dollars. So imagine the value that Andy Warhol gained by being just a character, a different character. And being just strange to people with a wig on it and the glasses and all of these different things. He ran around with a little tape recorder and he, by the way, was a great promoter of mine.

• 46:43Tim Ferriss?

  What is the significance of shifting gears? I mean, people can think of it, of course, in an automotive capacity. But shift gears, what does that mean to you? And are there any particular stories that stand out?

• 46:54Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I talked about it earlier. You wake up from a surgery that you think is two hours. They replace your heart valve and then someone tells you, we poked through your heart wall. And you now have been out for sixteen hours and now you have to stay here seven days. You're not out of the woods yet. You know, we have to do everything we can to keep you alive. And you know, you almost died on the operating table and it could still happen next night. If you don't really get going with the walking and you get pneumonia. So that you have to shift gears very quickly. I usually call it the art of improvisation. You know that you have to be very good in improvising because there's a lot of things that come up to you in life, but you have to be really good in improvising.

• 47:37Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And this happened to me all the time when I was governor, I had to quickly shift gears. It happened also in show business, where you have to shift gears, but it's the unexpected is happening and you have to be kind of like ready for that and confront that. I mean, that's the most important thing. It's just so many people get stuck on certain things and the track and they then cannot get off that track. I just always felt like I was very good in shifting gears, like going from bodybuilding to show business. I mean, you really had to shift gears because all of a sudden, certain other things became important. I mean, think about it, you go and you do bodybuilding.

• 48:18Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Every athlete always tells you that you got to go and keep the motions out of the way because it's the emotions that gonna kill you. You cannot go train and compete and train for a competition, for a world championship or the Olympic Games or whatever it is and be emotionally involved in whatever it is because it can derail you. So you do that and I've become a master in that. I became like cornerstone, but then all of a sudden you go and you start taking acting classes and you start hearing from the acting teacher, Arnold, you talk like a fucking cold fish.

• 48:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I mean, there's no emotions there. I got to go and find your emotions. So think about that for a second, all your life long, you hear now that this is like bad and now all of a sudden you hear you have to be more emotional, you have to be in touch with your emotions. Have you thought about lately the smell of a rose? I said, the smell of what? A rose. He says, a rose smells a certain way, it's a beautiful smell. So I said, what does this have to do with acting? He says, ah. He says, if you sit there on the scene and you start thinking about that smell of a rose, you have a totally different facial expression.

• 49:38Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You close your eyes, you know, let's assume that you want to compliment the woman, the perfume she wears. You can't go and says, I like your perfume.

• 49:48Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Stupid. But if you go and say, ah, what are you wearing? Oh, it smells wonderful. I mean, you have good taste. He says that's a totally different tone. He says it would change your voice. If you smell the rose, it would change your voice. But you only can do that if you really smell it and be in touch with it. So that's what I'm talking about shifting gears very quickly. So from one year to the next, I had to kind of all of a sudden have all the emotions kick in and make everything work that didn't really work in the past.

• 50:24Tim Ferriss?

  I'm curious to ask you about how that re-accessing of emotion maybe has informed how you experience grief yourself. Since we last spoke, you lost Franco, Franco Colombo. And I'm just wondering what that grief was like for you to experience.

• 50:43Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I have to say I react a little bit differently to those kind of things than everyone else. Because to me, it's not so much the shock as it is the ongoing missing a person. Because there's certain friends that have become part of you. And so if they pass away and they die, something dies in you. And so when I imagine every day when I walk into my living room and I see this chessboard where Franco and I played chess in the last 10 years, two, three times a week, and drank wine, smoked the stogie and just talked.

• 51:25Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  In the talk, like 65 and 70 years old's talk rather than the way 20 years old's talk, you know, like in the old days. And because Franco, I've known since I was 18 years old. So then our conversations were differently than they were as of the last 10 years. Where we talk about kids, where we talk about family, where we talk about where we grew up and about the past. And it was kind of like deeper conversations and more emotional conversations. And now all of a sudden, every day when you walk in your living room, you see this chess table down the corner. Franco is not sitting there anymore. And that, to me, you know, is heartbreaking.

• 52:05Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And when I go to the gym and I drive down with the bicycle and Franco came on the bicycle, he was not good at bicycle riding. He was all over the place. That was funny. And I had people sometimes videotape him, you know, just to show how goofy he looks on a bicycle. I think the bike seat was maybe too high up, but we couldn't lower it. Whatever the problem was, it was just hilarious because he was in a five-three, according to him. I think he was five-one or five-two the most. But anyway, he always said five-three. And then working out with him, the fun of working out with him. Then I had him in so many movies. I remember when I directed the movie The Switch for Tales of the Crypt.

• 52:48Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I had him in Conan the Barbarian, I had him in that. In Terminator, I had him in that. I had him in all those movies in there. So he was just, he became, you know, kind of part of me. So to me, it's not just the initial shock when someone tells you, oh, Franco just passed away on the beach in Sardinia. It is also then a daily thing, a weekly thing. Every time I go to the Arnold Classic and we hand out, I have a trophy. That is the Franco Columbo posing trophy or most muscular man trophy. And we hand those out. And there'll be Franco's body on it that I got made by a really great Italian sculptor. The double bicep pose.

• 53:30Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And the double bicep pose intentionally because Franco was really not, never known for his biceps. Because he was known, he had such overpowering back. His lats, his chest, his deltoids. It was so overpowering that people sometimes didn't even see the arms. So I on purpose wanted to do a double bicep pose. So in the future, people also remember him for his biceps. But it's just a great, great sculpture. So to me, Franco will live on forever. So is Joe Weider. You know, and Ben Weider and Dave Draper and Sergio Oliver and Bill Pearl and Reg Park.

• 54:11Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  To me, I see them all sitting in front of me when there's the Arnold Classic. And I see them all sitting there laughing and having a great time and watching the Arnold Classic and watching how bodybuilding is progressing, how the cash prices are going up, how we have bigger and bigger sponsors, how we have a bigger and bigger convention and expo. And all of this, how they enjoy all that. So that's what I see out there now. But it's kind of like, you know, it's in between kind of like, should I have tears in my eyes? And I'm out there and looking at all those faces of those bodybuilding champions and promoters of bodybuilding. Or should I smile? You know, it's this combination.

• 54:53Tim Ferriss?

  I would love to get your thoughts on aging and relating to aging because a lot of people struggle with relating or thinking about aging. I, for the first time in the last nine months, have had chronic pain for the first time due to a spinal issue. Which is the first time in my life I've ever experienced that. And I'm wondering if you could share anything about what you've learned or decided with respect to aging, just getting older as we all do.

• 55:19Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, the first time at all I experienced something similar to that is when I had my open heart surgery. I was not even fifty years old. I was, it was in April and in July I'm fifty. So it was just a few months before I was fifty. And it was the first time where I woke up after two heart surgeries. The first one didn't work, so they did the second one within forty-eight hours. And after that, I felt like I was damaged goods. I didn't feel anymore like invincible. You know, I didn't feel like I can handle anything. All of a sudden, there were limits put on me. Where the doctor said, "Don't train as heavy."

• 56:01Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You know, every time you force your reps, you put pressure on your valve unnecessarily. We have to replace those valves again in maybe ten, fifteen years from now. So the more you put pressure on it, the faster we will have to, it's like a tire. A thirty thousand mile an hour tire, you can use it up in one year, you can use it up in twenty years. So it's up to you. You know, it's that kind of a thing. So it was the first time where I started thinking about when I did stunts. I remembered that right after that was a stunt in End of Days, where the woman that was possessed by the devil takes the piano and runs it against my chest, wanted to kill me.

• 56:43Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So, and normally you can run a piano into my chest, doesn't make any fucking difference, I don't care, right? But because of the heart surgery and having been now cut open in the chest, I did not know how vulnerable that rib cage is. So I told them to measure out the distance with a rope, and then the rope comes to an end and it stops an eighth or quarter of an inch before my chest. So it looks still like it's smashing for in, I still sell it, but it's like you start planning on your vulnerability. And this then continues on, because all of a sudden,

• 57:25Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  you know, you used to kind of hop upstairs and hop downstairs in a squatting position to just get out of breath. So that when you start a scene, you're exhausted, you know, like you're cutting in in the middle of a fight scene, so that you're

• 57:43Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  and you have to be big breath. So all of a sudden you start jumping up and down and your knees start hurting. So now you realize, okay, between fifty and sixty, it's the knee punishment, so I have to watch my knees. Then after you're seventy, you start for the first time saying, you know, I've, I noticed myself walking less. Why am I walking less? I always used to love hiking, four, five hours up the steep mountain, and all of this I love, why am I walking less? Then I realized that I got back pain. When I walked a long time, I started getting cramps in my back. So I started walking less. So I started doing stretching exercises for the back.

• 58:29Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And so things like that start creeping up. Then you have to start kind of really be disciplined, say, okay, I still have to walk so many miles a day, so many steps a day and blah, blah, blah. But now you have to make yourself what came normally natural. So you get kind of like one thing after the next. Then you have shoulder surgeries on both shoulders. Then like yesterday, I had elbow surgery because my nerve had to be kind of relocated. Because where the nerve was, it created pressure on my nerve. And therefore, my little fingers started getting numb. So now that comes in, that's in the late seventies. It's always said, there's a bit of nerves. And someone talked to you about the neuropathy, about your legs and feet.

• 59:14Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And this is how it just, you know, creeps up on you, all this stuff. And the interesting thing is, it's like weightlifting. It doesn't matter how old you are or how young you are. It doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter what color you are. It doesn't matter from where you're from. Two hundred pounds is two hundred pounds. It's the same fucking thing for everybody. And the same is also when you get older. It makes no fucking difference who you are. You can be the biggest fucking celebrity in the world, but you still get your back pain. You still get your hip pain. You still get your shoulder pain. You still get your elbow pain. You still get numb fingers. You still have to watch your heart. You still have to watch the diet.

• 59:57Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  You still get fat if you don't watch the diet. If you eat three times a day a full meal, you get fat. If you cut one meal out, all of this kind of stuff, you have to start doing. So it's just that simple. And this is all kind of so that we stay alive longer and that we kind of like, because we all are. The time you're born, your time cut is set. It's set. The only thing that changes it is you, right? So let's assume I'm set for eighty-five. So I can decide, do I want to go to ninety? Yeah, I can do that, but then I have to live really healthy. Someone else is set for ninety, you can live to a hundred. But you can stretch it a little bit.

• 1:00:40Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And you can also fuck it up big time. You can be set for eighty-five and you wipe up at seventy. You know, my dad wiped out with sixty-six. He was in pension for one year and then he wiped out. He died because of too much smoking and alcohol and all of those things. So he cut himself short. He maybe was meant to be eighty, but he definitely wiped out with sixty-six. So my mother, you know, she died with seventy-six. Well, she did it herself because, I mean, she had a congenital heart disease, which is what I have, which is the valve. But she had the choice to get surgery or not. She says, no, if God wants me, he should have me.

• 1:01:24Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And so she resisted any surgery. There are some people, when you watch the shows in Sardinia, they live to a hundred because they have no problems. What they sleep in the afternoon, they take their naps. They eat well, they walk around for miles and miles every day. They still walk and work. The women are still in the kitchen with the age of ninety, making food for the whole family and all this stuff. So they push it. They push the envelope beyond of what they were meant for. So this is the way we can do it. But I mean, I think there is a reason when you get to a certain age to be concerned about it. I don't know if it's the age that you're in now. You're still a young punk.

• 1:02:09Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I can hope. You have your whole life early, you could be my grandson.

• 1:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  So you have been an athlete, as it was laid out in the three chapters in the mini-series, athlete, actor, American, right? You've had this arc. How do you think of yourself now? What is your identity now? And how do you hope to use the time that you have left? Because of course, you have this book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. You have the newsletter, which is done very well. You have more than half a million people for Pump Club. You have the Pump app. How do you think of yourself now? And what do you want to focus on in the next 10 years, if you have, let's say, 10 years left, something like that?

• 1:02:55Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Well, I don't really think of myself now any different than I thought of myself when I was governor, when I thought of myself as an actor, as a bodybuilder. You know, I'm very rarely in the moment, hopefully, I just appreciate what I'm doing right now, because I always think about the future. You know, I don't like the past. I appreciate the present, but I really live for the future. I always just live about where I want to go. There's a lot of things I want to accomplish environmentally. There's a lot of things I want to accomplish when it comes to public policy. There's a lot of things I want to accomplish in show business. There's a lot of things that I want to accomplish in the promotion of health and fitness and bodybuilding. So all of those different worlds, I hopefully

• 1:03:39Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  can manage to combine them and create a certain synergy and work so that one can help from the other. So the bodybuilding can help from the show business, my success in show business, that the show business can get helped with the success of the fitness movement. Then my newsletter that I have, which is going through the roof right now, the Pump Club, all of that is kind of like playing into this whole thing. I'm very happy that all of a sudden now it's kind of like an unexpected new era for me, which is the era of motivational speeches, the era of motivational books, the era of motivational.

• 1:04:17Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Newsletters, I mean, not in my wildest dreams to ever think about that I want to create a positive corner in the internet. And it was only because there was so much negativity out there. I started thinking about, well, maybe I should say some nice things and some positive things. And it became a huge hit beyond my expectation. And so I now I do speeches every so often, if it's the Ukrainian war, the Russian war in Ukraine, or if it's the insurrection, or if it is prejudice, or whatever the issues are, I tackle those. So as I said to you earlier, I'm the guy that climbs out Mount Everest and sees another bunch of peaks. And therefore I say, oh, my God, I didn't even know they were there. And I climbed them. And so that's what I do.

• 1:05:02Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  This is a continuous climb. Nothing changes. I climbed to twenty, I'm climbing now.

• 1:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  What do you hope the impact of Be Useful will be? What would you hope people to gain from it or use it for?

• 1:05:18Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Everyone will use it for something else. I think that the whole thing is about helping people live a better life and be able to fulfill their dreams, whatever those dreams are. You know, it's just simple things like don't listen to the naysayers or create a vision. And I know that because I asked my kids when they were like eighteen, nineteen years old, what do you want to do? Why I want to go to college? They couldn't answer me. Well, I could answer that question when I was eighteen, nineteen, you know. So I'm concerned about that because they're sitting there looking too much in the computer, too much on the iPhone and on the iPad, and they get ideas from someone else. But this is their ideas, but not their ideas, but my kids' ideas. They need to be by themselves and sit in the jacuzzi or sit somewhere on a mountain

• 1:06:03Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  or out there by themselves and start thinking. Let the dreams come into your mind. Let your deep inside come out and give yourself time. Don't always look at the machine. And so I'm trying to tell people, this is simple rules that I talk about in the book. Where you kind of learn, you know, that here is how I create a goal. Because without a goal, without a vision, you have nothing. Where are you gonna go? You know, it's like you have an airplane pilot that doesn't know where to fly. He has the best airplane. He can fly around, around, around, and then eventually he crashed. That's what happens to you in your life. You crash. You're not gonna go anywhere. So you need to have a direction. You need to have a goal. Why you get up in the morning?

• 1:06:48Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  What are you struggling towards? What it is? Why you're happy to go to bed at night? Did you need some rest? You get up in the next morning and have the energy again? All of this has to have purpose. There has to be purpose. So this is what I try to do is kindle a little bit of this light in my book and say to people in a casual way. You know, have a goal. Here's how you can do it. This is how I did it. You know, and then big goals, don't be afraid of big goals. You know, big goals are just as easy as little goals is. You know, and by the way, I know that every human being is afraid of failure. But you can overcome that, you know, by accepting failure. You know, we in bodybuilding, we go and do failure with our reps.

• 1:07:31Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So every single day when we train, we experience failure. We're not afraid of it. Because it's like Muhammad Ali said, he say, hey, how many reps do you do in sit ups? He says, I don't start counting until it starts hurting, I start failing. That's when I start counting. So, I mean, in lifting, you can only know how much you lift if you're willing to fail. So Michael Jordan, when he talked about his five thousand shots that he missed in basketball and how many two hundred and eighty some games he missed in basketball and all this stuff. That's what made me great. Well, wow, that's an eye opener. You know, when you hear that, that's really powerful. The greatest basketball player talks about failure that made him great. So people should look at that.

• 1:08:16Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  They should start thinking about that. Don't start approaching everything with, oh, I'm afraid. What is if I fail? What is if he doesn't like it? What if I make a fool of myself? Well, you know, it's people afraid of speaking, public speaking. The biggest fear that people have because they they are worried that they may fail or sound stupid and stuff like that. But they know that. Better get rid of all of this, you know, worry about failure and you will be then free. And I'm not saying you will be able to get rid of it completely. You can never change a hundred percent, but you can change somewhat. So that you're not as afraid anymore of failure and that you're actually looking forward to that. And that you're saying, okay, I'm gonna go all out and do a fail. You know, that you approach it differently, that the way you look at failure.

• 1:09:00Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  And look, I've always pushed myself, what do you think when you run for governor? I mean, it would be the highest embarrassment if you would have lost, right? But I I I took the chance. I was not afraid of failure. I could see my vision very clearly. This is how I'm gonna sell to the California people what I'm going to do for Californians. And that's how I'm going to approach the governorship and blah blah blah. And you know, if they buy in, great. If they don't, then I lost. Then I move on with something else, but I'm not going to freeze now and say, oh my God, but if I lose. But then I would have never run in the first place, if I would be afraid to run, right? So you never know how far it's gonna take you. So I think simple rules like that.

• 1:09:43Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I wanted to have those people take away those rules and or for instance, giving back. As soon as you realize that you're not a self-made man and you realize that we all were created by your parents. And that you were created by mentors, teachers, coaches. And many other people that none of us know, but you yourself know. I mean, those are the people that have created me. I mean, just alone, if I wouldn't have had Joe Weider to bring me over to America, how could I have come to America? So how can I say I was self-made? How could I have become governor if not eight point five, five point eight million people voted for me? I mean, I I'm not a dictator. I was voted in through the democratic process. So did I make myself governor? No.

• 1:10:28Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So I'm not a self-made man. So I have to recognize that, that my training, my money, everything comes from a lot of different people. And therefore, that means when you recognize that, that you now have the responsibility of going out and help others. There are so many people out there that need help. And it's like my father-in-law said, Sergeant Schreiber, who was, who created the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps, and all of these great programs in the sixties. He said to a bunch of Yale students at a graduation class, he said, tear down this mirror that you always look at yourself. Tear down this mirror and you will be able

• 1:11:09Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  to look beyond that mirror. And you will see the millions of people that need your help. That's exactly right. As soon as we start for a minute, looking at ourselves, then you will be able to look beyond yourself. And you see that there are people out there that need help. There are poor people out there that need help. There are fire victims right now, out there that need your help. There are earthquake victims out there. There are homeless people out there. There are war veterans out there. There are kids that come from poor backgrounds, that need to learn how to speak English, how to write English, how to do math, and all of the stuff. There's immigrants that didn't even speak English. So there's so many areas where you can be helpful, that takes money or takes no money, just effort.

• 1:11:52Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  So never ever think it's all just about you. Someone helped you where you are today, so now you go out and help someone else. So this is another one of my lessons, is just, you know, break that mirror in front of you. So these are the different lessons that I teach people that really had a profound impact on me and made me successful. And the no bullshit rules, and anyone can follow it. That's what it is.

• 1:12:18Tim Ferriss?

  So people can find the new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. Anywhere find books are sold. They can go to beusefulbook.com. The newsletter can be found at arnoldspumpclub.com. And we'll link to all this in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. Arnold, is there anything else that you would like to say? Any closing comments or other requests of the audience? Suggestions? Anything at all that you'd like to add before we come to a close?

• 1:12:45Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  No, no, I just want to say to the people, I want to thank them for having been such great supporters of mine. You know, without them, as I said earlier, I will be nothing. I mean, if it wouldn't have been for the bodybuilding fans as I grew up, they were cheering there and screaming Arnold, Arnold motivated me, I will be nothing. If it wouldn't have been for the movie fans that went to run to see Conan the Barbarian and made it the number one box office, they then gave me all the headlines, I would have been nothing. All the Jim Camerons and the Ivan Reitmans and all of these people and the people that are now following my newsletter, the Pump Club and all of these people that are even interested in a book like Be Useful and that go to my seminars and listen to my speeches, my motivational speeches.

• 1:13:29Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  I just really love that I have had such an extraordinary following and that some of my speeches have reached like three, five and a half, six billion people. That's really extraordinary. So I want to say thank you. Without them, I will be nothing. And thank you to America for giving me everything.

• 1:13:49Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Arnold, for the time yet again.

• 1:13:51Arnold Schwarzenegger?

  Absolutely. Thank you, Tim. You did a great job.

• 1:13:54Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 1:14:38Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

• 1:15:05Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:15:48Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:16:33Tim Ferriss?

  manage stress. Now, I do my best, always, to eat nutrient-dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So, part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So, each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly

• 1:17:14Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:17:59Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:18:42Tim Ferriss?

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