Arnold Schwarzenegger
Before he became the star of the Terminator franchise, the governor of California and one of the most successful bodybuilders of all time, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a successful entrepreneur.
As the actor details in his autobiography, Total Recall, to make ends meet, he and his best friend, the late bodybuilder Franco Columbu, started a construction business together after they moved to Los Angeles. He exclusively employed fellow bodybuilders that he’d me t at the Gold’s Gym and charged significantly lower prices than his competitors. This didn’t enable the business to become as successful as he’d hoped. He started to notice that American people were fascinated with all things European, happily paying premium prices for Italian coffee and Swedish massages. As a result, he rebranded himself and his fellow bodybuilders as a group of “Speciality European Bricklayers” and doubled his prices. Schwarzenegger also headed a mail-order business out of his apartment, and supplied workout pamphlets to customers looking to build muscle.
Over the following few years, he used the profits he made from his bricklaying business to put himself through business school and start to invest in the property market.
Through sound investments, he made his first million not through acting or bodybuilding, by turning the comparatively modest original profits into several million by buying and flipping several buildings in the local area.
