By any measure, Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most successful people in the world. He was born in a small village in Austria as the son of a policeman and emigrated to the United States at the age of 21, even though he hardly spoke any English at the time. In so many areas of life, he has achieved what most people can only dream of:
- He won the Mr. Olympia title seven times, became the most famous bodybuilder in the world and made the sport popular in the United States and around the world.
- Despite his size, almost unpronounceable European name and thick accent not fitting the typical Hollywood mold, he became one of the highest paid movie action stars in the world.
- He was twice elected Governor of California, which was the world’s eighth largest economy at the time.
- As a businessman and investor, he has earned hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the final chapter of his autobiography, Total Recall, Schwarzenegger outlines his ten rules for success. Three of these rules are especially relevant to entrepreneurs and managers:
1. “Never Follow The Crowd. Go Where It’s Empty.”
As a teenager, Arnold Schwarzenegger chose a sport that most people only ridiculed: bodybuilding. When he told his parents what he was doing, they shook their heads in disbelief. As did his friends. Fame and fortune were more readily available in other sports—such as soccer or tennis. But Schwarzenegger chose bodybuilding. He was first a mover and used bodybuilding to launch one of the most incredible careers the world has ever seen.
- Doing the same as everyone else means achieving the same as everyone else. Anyone who wants more will need to have the courage to go against the flow and find their own niche, just like Schwarzenegger.
- My doctoral dissertation, The Wealth Elite, was based on a series of interviews with self-made millionaires and billionaires, including one multibillionaire who started out with just five employees and now employs almost 30,000. He made his billions in the dairy business, so it’s no surprise that his approach to business is best illustrated with a story involving cows: “There’s a great example from farming, when a herd of cows comes to a fork in the road. There’s a beautiful green pasture on the left, which 100 cows head towards, and there’s one cow that goes to the pasture on the right, where the grass is nowhere near as lush. And in no time at all, the 100 cows have grazed and their grass is gone. The lone cow might not have had the lushest grass, but she could take her time and eat her fill.”
2. “Don’t Overthink”
In his autobiography, Schwarzenegger writes that, “If you think all the time, the mind cannot relax… This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use your brain, but part of us needs to go through life instinctively. By not analyzing everything, you get rid of all the garbage that loads you up and bogs you down.”
Researchers have found that people frequently make better decisions when they spend less time weighing up which course of action to take. At first glance this may seem surprising, but minds are intuitive as well as analytical. Intuition is the sum of every experience—the sum of implicit, unconscious learning processes. Anyone who believes that they need to analyze everything as thoroughly as possible will slowly lose the ability to listen to what their gut is telling them. And gut feeling really is just as important as analytical skills. Academic entrepreneurship research has demonstrated that entrepreneurs make a lot of decisions based on their gut feelings. If success in business was reserved for people with the greatest analytical skills and book knowledge, then business administration professors would be the richest people in the world.
The Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Konrad Lorenz, put it this way: “If you press too hard… nothing comes of it. You must give a sort of mysterious pressure and then rest, and suddenly BING! ... the solution comes.”
3. “No Matter What You Do In Life, Selling Is Part Of It.”
When Schwarzenegger was starting out, he stood in underwear at one of Munich’s most prominent public squares. He had asked a friend to call some journalists: “You remember Schwarzenegger, the guy who won the stone-lifting contest? Well, now he’s Mr. Universe, and he’s at Stachus square in his underwear.” The next day he was in the newspapers. Schwarzenegger is one of the most famous people in the world, with massive name recognition wherever he goes. And more than anything, he owes his unique career—as a bodybuilder, movie star, politician and entrepreneur—to his sales talent.
Since he hung up his posing pouch, there have been lots of bodybuilders with more muscles, but none with his incredible sales talent. That’s why very few people know their names but everyone knows Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some people believe that the only requirements for success are being “good” at something or having a superior product. But the idea that quality alone will guarantee success is simply naive. After all, if this were true, Apple, Microsoft and Mercedes could have stopped their advertising and PR campaigns many years ago.
With the iPhone, Steve Jobs invented an incredible product. But his understanding of marketing and PR was equally important. He staged each of his presentations as the kind of event that people would look forward to with feverish anticipation. Then there’s Warren Buffett, who is unarguably a brilliant investor. At the same time, he also knows just how important it is to sell his performance. That’s why every year in Omaha, he and his partner Charlie Munger turn his company’s annual general meeting into a huge show, the capitalist Woodstock. And there’s Madonna, who experts say is only a moderately gifted singer. So how did she become the best-paid singer in the world for so many years, earning hundreds of millions? Because she knew better than others how to sell herself and build a brand.
“You can have the greatest movie in the world,” said Schwarzenegger, “but if you don’t get it out there, if people don’t know about it, you have nothing. It’s the same with poetry, with painting, with writing, with inventions.” And it’s the same in the world of business.
