I'm listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, Total Recall, My Unbelievable True Life Story.
There are so many lessons about succeeding in this work, the first 2 chapters are worth $1000 easily, and I'm listening to it for free from the library.
I had no clue all the things he was involved in. He was a hustler when it comes to business.
He arrived in the US in 1967 with a gym bag full of clothes, and made his first million in real estate. Before his success in real estate, he started a European brick-laying business with his Italian training partner, Franco Columbu, and made a lot of money renovating people's homes in the LA area.
I think the most important lesson is how so very clear his vision was from an early age back in Austria. He had seen his first film, Tarzan, with his older brother, and it had a life-changing impact on him.
He quickly envisioned a clear path for himself. He knew he was going to America after that, was going to make a million dollars, and was going to be a movie star. There simply was the vision, and he needed a way to make it happen.
He became very strategic in his thinking, since it wasn't like he could just hop on a plane and fly to the US. He started hanging out with athletes, with no particular knowledge about the different sports. He avoided the ones that could involve travel to the US, but only for brief visits and then back to Austria.
Body-building was really his ticket to the US, that would allow him to stay here permanently. It was his big initial domino that would knock down even bigger dominoes on to the path of achieving his specific dreams.
His English was so bad, he couldn't even order cabbage in a restaurant without a gaffe, or thank a female host at a Christmas dinner party without turning a common Austrian colloquialism into a vulgar misstep, and yet he made a million very quickly, had already been cast in a lead role in his first film in 1969.
He started taking as many English classes, and then business classes. He wrote down his specific goals, and made index cards on a regular basis with very realistic, specific goals.
"I'm going to:
Get 12 more units in college,
Gain 7 pounds of solid muscle,
Earn enough money to save $5000,
Work out 5 hours a day,
Find an apartment building to buy and move into."
Since he was here on a work visa, he could not take more than 2 units from any college at a time, so he had to attend classes at Santa Monica, UCLA, West Los Angeles.
He took English, Business Administration, Math, History at Santa Monica.
At UCLA, he took courses from the Business school in Accounting, Economics, Marketing, and Management. He had already taken accounting in Austria, but he wanted to learn everything he possible could about business in the US, especially with the computing revolution.
Arnold out-hustled everyone in each of their prospective industries, whether it was body-building, real estate, marketing, business, and eventually Hollywood.
Having a clear vision for himself, specifically identifying his weaknesses and plans to make them strengths, then executing those plans relentlessly, resulted in his success.
When he failed, he failed quickly and immediately came up with a plan to recover from the lesson, and was ruthless with himself on what it was he needed to fix with himself, whether it was his accent, his calves, his posing, his marketing strategies, real estate mistakes with supersonic airport land in the desert, a car accident, etc.
I can't recommend the book enough.
There are so many lessons about succeeding in this work, the first 2 chapters are worth $1000 easily, and I'm listening to it for free from the library.
I had no clue all the things he was involved in. He was a hustler when it comes to business.
He arrived in the US in 1967 with a gym bag full of clothes, and made his first million in real estate. Before his success in real estate, he started a European brick-laying business with his Italian training partner, Franco Columbu, and made a lot of money renovating people's homes in the LA area.
I think the most important lesson is how so very clear his vision was from an early age back in Austria. He had seen his first film, Tarzan, with his older brother, and it had a life-changing impact on him.
He quickly envisioned a clear path for himself. He knew he was going to America after that, was going to make a million dollars, and was going to be a movie star. There simply was the vision, and he needed a way to make it happen.
He became very strategic in his thinking, since it wasn't like he could just hop on a plane and fly to the US. He started hanging out with athletes, with no particular knowledge about the different sports. He avoided the ones that could involve travel to the US, but only for brief visits and then back to Austria.
Body-building was really his ticket to the US, that would allow him to stay here permanently. It was his big initial domino that would knock down even bigger dominoes on to the path of achieving his specific dreams.
His English was so bad, he couldn't even order cabbage in a restaurant without a gaffe, or thank a female host at a Christmas dinner party without turning a common Austrian colloquialism into a vulgar misstep, and yet he made a million very quickly, had already been cast in a lead role in his first film in 1969.
He started taking as many English classes, and then business classes. He wrote down his specific goals, and made index cards on a regular basis with very realistic, specific goals.
"I'm going to:
Get 12 more units in college,
Gain 7 pounds of solid muscle,
Earn enough money to save $5000,
Work out 5 hours a day,
Find an apartment building to buy and move into."
Since he was here on a work visa, he could not take more than 2 units from any college at a time, so he had to attend classes at Santa Monica, UCLA, West Los Angeles.
He took English, Business Administration, Math, History at Santa Monica.
At UCLA, he took courses from the Business school in Accounting, Economics, Marketing, and Management. He had already taken accounting in Austria, but he wanted to learn everything he possible could about business in the US, especially with the computing revolution.
Arnold out-hustled everyone in each of their prospective industries, whether it was body-building, real estate, marketing, business, and eventually Hollywood.
Having a clear vision for himself, specifically identifying his weaknesses and plans to make them strengths, then executing those plans relentlessly, resulted in his success.
When he failed, he failed quickly and immediately came up with a plan to recover from the lesson, and was ruthless with himself on what it was he needed to fix with himself, whether it was his accent, his calves, his posing, his marketing strategies, real estate mistakes with supersonic airport land in the desert, a car accident, etc.
I can't recommend the book enough.
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