Without any sort of hyperbole we think its safe to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger was arguably dealt one of the worst hands of any actor in Hollywood right now. Born into a dirt-poor family living in a tiny Austrian village that was still recovering from WW2, Schwarzenegger grew up in a house that didn’t have a fully functioning shitter for a decade. Yet despite this, he went on to become one of the richest, most powerful and most recognised men on the face of the planet, thanks in part, to his ability to hustle like a motherfucker.
As discussed in the image macro above this very paragraph, when he first arrived in LA to begin his career as a bodybuilder and bouncer for bear raves, to make ends meet Arnold Schwarzenegger started a brick laying company. Ever the savvy businessman (more on that later), Schwarzenegger staffed this fledging business exclusively with bodybuilders he’d met at Gold’s Gym. On top of staffing his business with some of the fittest and finest specimens of the male form in all of LA, Schwarzenegger also charged significantly lower prices than the majority of his competitors, hoping that the people of LA would realise what a bargain they were getting.
However, for some reason, nobody in LA seemed to like the idea of Mr. Fucking Universe building their house and despite Schwarzenegger’s best efforts and what we can only imagine was an ungodly amount of flexing near the freeway holding a big-ass sign, business lagged. Just to remind you, this is what Schwarzenegger looked like back then.
Look at him. His biceps look big enough to crack diamond walnuts on, his chest is one flex away from being classified as a warcrime and his hair looks like it was carved onto his head by a renaissance era sculptor. He wasn’t just a man in his prime, he was a fucking force of nature, there are stories of women straight up fainting after seeing Schwarzenegger take his shirt off and he was offering to walk around like that, surrounded by a bunch of almost as ridiculous buff friends for less than the cost of the nearest competitor and not a single lonely housewife in LA took him up on the offer. We’re surprised they even bothered to make porn in the 70’s after that bombshell dropped.
Business continued to lag until Schwarzenegger realised that the people of America had a strange fascination with all things European, noting that other businesses in the area charged a premium for things like Italian coffee and Swedish massages just because they being from Europe made them fancy somehow. With that in mind, Schwarzenegger began touting himself and his rippling friends as a group of “Speciality European Bricklayers” then doubled his prices because fuck the people of LA we guess.
As expected, as soon as Schwarzenegger began telling people that his team of ubermensch were actually specially trained in the art of bricklaying by a team of warrior monks atop a mountain in France or some shit, his phone started ringing off the hook as dozens of poseurs from the richest parts of LA clambered to have their houses built by Schwarzenegger’s team of bodybuilders who days earlier would have done the job for a fraction of the price.
We honestly don’t know what the most hilarious part about this story is, that Schwarzenegger was able to make so much money just by telling people he was European, or that the people (okay women) of LA turned down a chance to have half naked bodybuilders walk around their property for next to nothing because they didn’t think they were properly qualified to lift heavy things.
Over the next few years, Schwarzenegger used the profits he made bricklaying and being exceedingly buff to put himself through business school and invest in the property market. A few years later, Schwarzenegger had turned the comparatively modest profits from his business into a several millions dollars after buying and flipping several buildings in the local area.
In other words, Arnold Schwarzenegger is world-famous today, partly because he convinced a bunch of assholes in the 70’s that they should pay him double to do the same job as someone else just because he had a funny accent.
