Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Author:Arnold Schwarzenegger [Schwarzenegger, Arnold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Let Them Underestimate You

A good salesman knows that the key to making a sale and creating a customer for life is to give the customer more than they expected and leave them feeling like they’re always getting the better end of the deal. When it’s you that you’re selling, the best way to exceed expectations every time is to keep those expectations low for as long as possible. Or maybe a better way to put it is that you shouldn’t be afraid to let your customer hold on to their low expectations, because then it’s that much easier for you to blow them away and sell them on what you have to offer.

Two weeks before the recall election in 2003, I took part in a televised debate with the four other major candidates. This was the high-stakes moment of that crazy campaign. Five hundred members of the media applied for credentials to attend. There were at least sixty cameras in the room. The debate was being broadcast live on all the national cable news channels, as well as on every local network affiliate around the state. According to polling from that week, two thirds of likely voters said the outcome of the debate would significantly impact who they voted for. The main Democratic candidate, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, was in the lead going in. Nobody knew what to expect, but judging by the news stories leading up to the debate, everyone was expecting me to fall on my face.

For weeks, it was nothing but questions about my credibility. He’s an actor, is he for real? He’s a bodybuilder, does he have any ideas? Can he really be that smart? He’s rich and famous, does he actually care? How can he possibly be qualified to lead forty million people and guide the world’s sixth-largest economy?

I won’t lie: to my ego, all these questions were fucking frustrating. I’d been dealing with this kind of doubt ever since I moved to America, at every stage, in every arena, for what I believe is the same reason each time: no one had ever seen someone like me before. In the 1970s, there weren’t a lot of guys walking around Los Angeles carrying 235 pounds of muscle. In the ’80s, Hollywood didn’t have any action heroes who looked like they could actually kill bad guys. There were no leading men with muscles as thick as their accent either. I remember when I went on my first late-night talk show, I answered the simplest question, and the host said, “You can talk! Oh my God, ladies and gentlemen, he can talk!” And they all cheered. The same thing was happening again as I moved into politics.

If you ever find yourself in a similar position with people who hold positions of power or influence, and whom you have to sell your vision to, realize that they’re handing you a golden opportunity. When you’re different, when you’re unique, and nobody has ever dealt with someone like you before, they are going to drastically underestimate what you’re capable of.

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