Given that he’s mostly famous for playing a “more brawn than brains”, emotionless robot who speaks in fractured English (both in politics and on the big screen…), Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly thought of by the general public as a very shrewd, intelligent, and calculating businessman. But, it turns out, Arnold was (and is) just that; through a heck of a lot of hard work and savvy business dealings becoming a self-made millionaire long before he ever made it big in Hollywood, and doing this at an age when most of us still center our lives around binge drinking with our friends and generally trying not to think about all the student loans we’re presently accumulating.
Though the exact circumstances under which Schwarzenegger grew up have been subject to embellishment over the years, it is definitively known that he was born in the tiny Austrian village of Thal in 1947 into a household that has been variously described as having neither hot water nor electricity. Exactly how true this is, is up for debate but one thing that is abundantly clear is that Schwarzenegger grew up in a home of incredibly modest means. For instance, in his own words:
"We had no flushing toilet. No refrigerator. No Television. What we did have was food rations — and we did have British tanks around to give us kids the occasional lift to the elementary school."
A popular anecdote Schwarzenegger likes to tell from his youth is about the time his family bought a refrigerator, prompting them to stand around it in awe taking turns opening and closing it to feel the brush of cold air against their hands and faces. Yes, as a kid, Arnold Schwarzenegger was more impressed by a refrigerator than a tank, which maybe says a lot about his childhood.
In his youth, Schwarzenegger was known to have displayed an uncanny affinity for physical fitness and as a result, threw himself into and excelled at a number of sports including but not limited to soccer, gymnastics, boxing and swimming. However, it was during an impromptu trip to the gym at age 13 that Schwarzenegger’s life was changed forever. His soccer coach at the time had taken him to the gym so that he could work with the rest of the team to strengthen their legs, but Schwarzenegger, who’d never seen bodybuilders before, was incredibly intrigued by the physique and power of the men working out there.
He began weight training in earnest at about age 14 and was reportedly so dedicated to the craft that he’d break into his local gym on the weekends so that he could get in extra workouts. Schwarzenegger began competing in body building competitions shortly thereafter, placing as a runner up in the Steirer Hof Competition in Graz, Austria in 1963. His first victory came just 2 years later in 1965 when he was crowned Junior Mr. Europe, a victory that famously cost him a week in military prison.
You see, at the time of the Junior Mr. Europe competition, Schwarzenegger was right in the middle of fulfilling his mandatory year of military service for the Austrian government. Unwilling to miss the competition, he went AWOL to compete.
After fulfilling his obligation to the military, he once again threw himself into body building and spurred by his victory the previous year was able to secure himself the prestigious title of “Best-Built Athlete of Europe” in 1966.
He then was able to parlay this victory into an offer to compete in London for the title of Mr. Universe, a competition he would eventually come to win four times, starting with a historic win at age 20. He also won the equally distinguished title of Mr. Olympia an astounding seven times along with a multitude of other titles and bodybuilding honors throughout his lifetime.
You might be thinking at this point that it was all of these wins that made him rich. In some sense, that’s true, but not directly.
What Arnold did do with his winnings up to this point was shrewdly save and invest them so that by the time he arrived in the states in 1968 at age 21, he had about $27,000 to his name. One such investment was a gym in Munich that Schwarzenegger was able to turn into a success by using his body building celebrity to advertise it. He similarly used his status as one of the foremost body builders in Europe to start a mail order company, through which he sold various pieces of exercise equipment, supplements and leaflets to the public, something he was inspired to do after many fans wrote to him asking for tips on working out and he realised that they’d probably pay to hear the answer. Funny enough, unlike many similar services offered by other body builders, Schwarzenegger was particularly successful at this because he didn’t just take the money and send nothing or at least nothing of value; he actually delivered useful product and advice to those who sent him money.
Upon arriving in the United States, Schwarzenegger quickly set about putting his modest amount of money to work; once again investing it in a mail order business which he would later note was much easier in the U.S. than in Europe since it only required paying “$3.75 for a permit“.
To help make ends meet during his first few tentative years in America and also to help keep his physique in tip-top condition, he also started a brick laying company with fellow bodybuilder Franco Columbu. Although the pair offered rock bottom prices and the chance to have the work done by a man who was literally crowned the perfect specimen of manliness four years running, few people ended up actually hiring the pair. That was until Schwarzenegger and Columbu doubled their prices and started telling people that they were “speciality European bricklayers“, at which point they became inundated with work.
So up to this point he was managing to make a decent living, but we implied earlier that he became a millionaire in his 20’s. So how’d he go from middle class to the 1% so rapidly? In a word (or two in this case): real estate.
After heavily researching the market, he started with a down payment on an apartment complex worth $214,000, which he was able to quickly flip for a cool $360,000, netting him a $146,000 profit just a year after buying it. Rather than blowing it all as most early 20’s males might be inclined to do, he doubled down, reinvesting the profits back into another building. Once again, his investment proved a wise one, with him selling it for a tidy profit a short while after buying it. Each time, rather than spending the money on cars, alcohol, women, etc. as most early 20’s males with his physique might have been tempted to do, he simply rinsed and repeated, one upping his investment every time. A few years later, he was a millionaire.
If you’re wondering how a once poor bodybuilder from Austria with a tenuous grasp of English was able to display such an incredible level of business acumen, one of the first things Schwarzenegger did when he arrived in the states was enroll himself in Santa Monica college and begin taking English and business classes. Add a good amount of brain power and using the discipline he no doubt learned from years of making his body into the best impression of the mythical Hercules possible, by his mid-20s he had achieved the American dream.
So by the time 35 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger was busy becoming a household name with his first Hollywood blockbuster in the 1982, Conan the Barbarian, he’d already been a millionaire for almost a decade and had continued his savvy investing and career as a body builder in the interim. Later, of course, he’d also become the Governor of the great state of California, and even has aspirations for running for President, despite the legal hurdle of not being a natural-born citizen. Not bad for a person whose major highlight to his childhood was opening and closing a refrigerator.
This man was naked except for a loin cloth and high-strapped sandals. He was brown-skinned, with close-cropped black hair and restless black eyes that set off a broad, arrogant face. In girth and breadth he was enormous, with huge limbs on which the great muscles swelled and rippled at each slightest movement.
His hands were the largest Conan had ever seen. The assurance of gigantic physical strength colored his every action and inflection.
"Why not enter, barbarian?" he called mockingly, with an exaggerated gesture of invitation.
Conan's eyes began to smolder ominously, but he trod warily into the chamber, his sword ready.
"Who the devil are you?" he growled.
"I am Baal-pteor," the man answered. "Once, long ago and in another land, I had another name. But this is a good name, and why Totrasmek gave it to me, any temple wench can tell you."
"So you're his dog!" grunted Conan. "Well, curse your brown hide, Baal-pteor, where's the wench you jerked through the wall?"
"My master entertains her!" laughed Baal-pteor. "Listen!"
From beyond a door opposite the one by which Conan had entered there sounded a woman's scream, faint and muffled in the distance.
"Blast your soul!" Conan took a stride toward the door, then wheeled with his skin tingling, Baal-pteor was laughing at him, and that laugh was edged with menace that made the hackles rise on Conan's neck and sent a red wave of murder-lust driving across his vision.
... He gripped the hilt with both hands, when a voice at his shoulder brought him about, to face the brown man, who had at last risen from the divan.
Slightly taller than Conan and much heavier, Baal-pteor loomed before him, a daunting image of muscular development. His mighty arms were unnaturally long, and his great hands opened and closed, twitching convulsively. Conan released the hilt of his imprisoned sword and fell silent, watching his enemy thorugh slitted lids.
"Your head, Cimmerian!" taunted Baal-pteor. "I shall take it with my bare hands, twisting it from your shoulders as the head of a fowl is twisted! Thus the sons of Kosala offer sacrifice to Yajur. Barbarian, you look upon a strangler of Yota-pong. I was chosen by the priests of Yajur in my infancy, and throughout childhood, boyhood, and youth I was trained in the art of slaying with the naked hands--for only thus are the sacrifices enacted. Yajur loves blood, and we waste not a drop from the victim's veins. When I was a child they gave me infants to throttle; when I was a boy I strangled young girls; as a youth, women, old men, and young boys. Not until I reached my full manhood was I given a strong man to slay on the altar of Yota-pong.
"For years I offered the sacrifices to Yajur. Hundreds of necks have snapped between these fingers--" he worked them before the Cimmerian's angry eyes. "Why I fled from Yota-pong to become Totrasmek's servant is no concern of yours. In a moment you will be beyond curiosity. The priests of Kosala, the stranglers of Yajur, are strong beyond the belief of men. And I was stronger than any. With my hands, barbarian, I shall break your neck!"
And like the stroke of twin cobras, the great hands closed on Conan's throat. The Cimmerian made no attempt to dodge or fend them away, but his own hands darted to the Kosalan's bull-neck. Baal-pteor's black eyes widened as he felt the thick cords of muscles that protected the barbarian's throat. With a snarl he exerted his inhuman strength, and knots and lumps and ropes of thews rose along his massive arms. And then a choking gasp burst from him as Conan's fingers locked on his throat. For an instant they stood there like statues, their faces masks of effort, veins beginning to stand out purply on their temples.
Conan's thin lips drew back from his teeth in a grinning snarl. Baal-pteor's eyes were distended and in them grew an awful surprise and the glimmer of fear. Both men stood motionless as images, except for the expanding of their muscles on rigid arms and braced legs, but strength beyond common conception was warring there--strength that might have uprooted trees and crushed the skulls of bullocks.
The wind whistled suddenly from between Baal-pteor's parted teeth. His face was growing purple. Fear flooded his eyes. His thews seemed ready to burst from his arms and shoulders, yet the muscles of the Cimmerian's thick neck did not give; they felt like masses of woven iron cords under his desperate fingers. But his own flesh was giving way under the iron fingers of the Cimmerian which ground deeper and deeper into the yielding throat muscles, crushing them in upon jugular and windpipe.
The statuesque immobility of the group gave way to sudden, frenzied motion, as the Kosalan began to wrench and heave, seeking to throw himself backward. He let go of Conan's throat and grasped his wrists, trying to tear away those inexorable fingers.
With a sudden lunge Conan bore him backward until the small of his back crashed against the table. And still farther over its edge Conan bent him, back and back, until his spine was ready to snap.
Conan's low laugh was merciless as the ring of steel.
"You fool!" he all but whispered. "I think you never saw a man from the West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man--like this!"
And with a savage wrench he twisted Baal-pteor's head around until the ghastly face leered over the left shoulder, and the vertebrae snapped like a rotten branch.
Conan hurled the flopping corpse to the floor, turned to the sword again, and gripped the hilt with both hands, bracing his feet against the floor.
Blood trickled down his broad breast from the wounds Baal-pteor's finger nails had torn in the skin of his neck. His black hair was damp, sweat ran down his face, and his chest heaved.
For all his vocal scorn of Baal-pteor's strength, he had almost met his match in the inhuman Kosalan.
But without pausing to catch his breath, he exerted all his strength in a mighty wrench that tore the sword from the magnet where it clung.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
