Monday, 11/02/2009 Print Version |
Governor Delivers Remarks at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business
GOVERNOR: Well, thank you very much for this nice introduction and for this nice speech, it's exactly the way I wrote it. (Laughter) No, thank you very much, Dean Daly, and also thank you very much to Bob Steers for inviting me here today to speak to all of you.
And it's great to be back in Washington. I want to thank you all, and I'm delighted to be part of this celebration and to be back here in Georgetown. The last time I was here at Georgetown, that was two and a half year ago, I gave a speech here and I said, "I'll be back." (Laughter) And so the Terminator keeps his promises, you can't complain about that. (Laughter)
Anyway, this is also Maria's alma mater, and so it is great to be here because of that. And also of course, because of that, Maria was obsessed, I have to tell you, to have one of our daughters go to Georgetown, obsessed about this. And as a matter of fact, I couldn't understand that because in Europe where I grew up, you know, you don’t send kids away to the other side of the country or to another country or to the other coast or something like that. Kids stayed home until they got married and then you couldn't even get them out of the house. So here it's a little different. Here the parents, somehow they're into this whole thing of sending the kids outside the state and to another coast and 3,000 miles away and all this.
So anyway, Maria took Katherine, our oldest daughter, all over the country. And she came then to Georgetown and she stayed here for two weeks to just make sure that she likes Georgetown. But, of course, I bided my time and they visited USC last. And so after I did my sales pitch after they saw USC I said to my daughter, "And besides all of this," I said, "just remember when you go to Washington, it's freezing cold and you're going to freeze your butt off the whole winter long, months and months and months." (Laughter) So anyway, I won and my daughter is now at USC.
But when it came to Christina, I tell you, Maria was like the female Terminator, (Laughter) and I had absolutely no chance there whatsoever. So Christina loves it here and I'm a happy papa because my daughter is happy and she's doing a great job. So it's great to see my daughter here and to be part of this celebration. (Applause)
I think that our sons, Christopher and Patrick, they're also candidates for the business school here. And I'll tell you why, because every year for the last 35 years or so I've been promoting the world championships in bodybuilding, called the Arnold's Classic, which now has turned into a fitness expo and a sports festival. So my son came to me when he was 10 years old and he said, "I would like to make some extra money." He said, "The lemonade stands don't do it." (Laughter)
So I said, "Well," I said, "at the Arnold's Classic people always ask me why don’t I have some t-shirts with my picture on it, or some pictures of me, or books, or lifting belts with my picture on it and so on. I said, "Why don't you open up a booth there and sell the products? I mean, they have every other company displaying their stuff, you should do that."
Anyway, he got started with that. First he needed a grownup to help him with the whole thing, but then he became quite an entrepreneur, I tell you. He knew exactly how many products he should order, he knew the profit margin that he had, he knew the percentages of everything and he knew how to do the inventory and how to do all of those kinds of things, so I was very proud. He had a friend of his and his brother Christopher help him with the booth, and they made between $50,000 and $70,000 in three days. And, of course, I believe very strongly that we also have to think about charity, so 90 percent of that money went to an after school program charity that I started many years ago. And 10 percent they could keep themselves, which is great money, $7,000, and he had to just split that with his brother and with his friends, so he made some really serious money.
And I tell you that the reason why I always say he's an entrepreneur, because he knows also where he sells this stuff. Because at the Arnold's Classic he sells t-shirts that say, "Pumping Up" and, you know, "Torture Your Muscles," "No Pain, No Gain." But then my wife is running a women's conference, which just happened these last two days, and there he goes also and sells this stuff. But there, all of a sudden the t-shirts say things like, you know, "Peace," "Love," "Compassion." And then, instead of having pictures of muscles on the t-shirts he had pictures of doves. (Laughter) So, I mean, he's quite -- like I said, he's quite an entrepreneur and he's doing a really terrific job with all of this.
And this is why I said one of these days I'll bring Patrick and Christopher here and they maybe can become part of this great business school which is, without any doubt, one of the greatest in the world. And I would love that, if they end up here, because I got used to it by now, to have them 3,000 miles away. So anyway, I'd be very happy to have them enter up here.
But anyway, I myself have a business degree from the University of Wisconsin. While business certainly can be taught, over the years I've decided that some people just have a natural affinity for business, or a natural affinity for marketing, for promotion and for making, you know, a success out of a particular product or an idea. For some reason I have always been smart in that. As a matter of fact, when you go back to my childhood, I already sold ice cream around the lake where I grew up, bought it for 10 shilling and then sold it for 20 shilling, and I've loved business ever since.
And no matter what you do in life, I find that there is a business aspect to it. I mean, you can even see that my friends in Hollywood, many times they make millions of dollars. Why are they bankrupt all of a sudden and owe millions of dollars to the IRS? Or Mike Tyson. I mean, he's an athlete, he thought he never had to think about business. Well, I think he should have thought about business. (Laughter) So no matter what you do, if you're an athlete or if you're a doctor, if you're an author, if you're a scientist or if you're an artist, it makes no difference; there is a business aspect to the whole thing.
And I've just recently again experienced that. I had a friend who is an artist, who was an extraordinary painter, but he couldn't sell his paintings that well, didn't get much money for it. And then I told him he has to go and get his art into the right gallery, have the right manager, lend his art to the right museum and know exactly how to frame his art, how to spotlight his art and all of this. Now he's selling his art for much more money. So there's a business aspect to absolutely everything.
So I just want to start this evening by talking a bit about my business background because business has been a big part of my life, and then I want to relate my experience to one of today's prominent issues.
I first learned about business from bodybuilding, believe it or not. I was in all of those competitions all over the world, but I figured out that the people that were running the competition were making a little bit more money than I was. There I was, spending hours in the gymnasium and pumping my muscles and lifting 50 tons of weights a day. But you know, yes I got the trophy, but they made more money. While I was pumping my muscles they were pumping their wallet. So I changed that. I began promoting bodybuilding competitions in America and eventually that grew, like I said earlier, into the Arnold's Classic that is now a sports festival and has 165,000 people coming through and participating at this event. So it's an extraordinary success.
And because of bodybuilding I also got into the mail-order business, to sell booklets and courses and lifting belts and products and vitamins and minerals and all kinds of things. As a matter of fact, I think I was the first bodybuilder that ever marketed himself -- and successfully so, may I remind you.
As a matter of fact, I did also a book, "Arnold, the Education of a Bodybuilder," it was called. And no one in those days, in 1977, thought that a bodybuilding book would be on the bestseller list. But you know something? Since I have the marketing ideas always and have great visions, I went to the publisher and I said, "I want to go to 30 cities in 30 days." And I pulled out a map and I said, "Let's go and start in California and work our way up to Oregon and Washington and to Vancouver and then across Canada and crisscross the United States." And after, of course, the 30 cities were over, my book was on the bestseller list and was the first bodybuilding book on the bestseller list.
And of course I did not only promote my products but also the sport of bodybuilding. And I don't have to tell you what happened since then, because then when I started there were 700 gymnasiums in America. Now there are 40,000 gymnasiums, and that doesn't even count all the spas in the hotels and all the YMCAs and WCAs and all the gymnasiums in the police stations and fire stations or on military bases or in hospitals where they have weight resistance training for rehabilitation and all of those kind of things. It all started with the book, and then the "Pumping Iron" book and then the movie Pumping Iron. And, of course, it popularized all over the world.
But I tell you something, I had the same kind of a marketing idea and vision when I got into the movie business. It was the same thing. I remember that I was one of the first actors to get serious about marketing a film internationally. Until then Hollywood stars would say, "I’m an actor, I'm an artist. I’m not a salesman. Why should I sell my movies?"
Well, let me tell you something. I was, as a matter of fact, one of the first actors that was interested in that. They were reluctant, other actors, to go overseas except maybe to the Cannes Film Festivals and to party at big yachts. That's where it ended. So when I first proposed a multi-city, multi-country tour, the reaction was, "Are you serious?"
I said, "Yes, I am. I've learned my experience in the past." I said, "Promotion is very important, because if you don't make sure that everyone knows that you have a product out there you have nothing." So we went and organized the tour and I went to France, to Britain, to Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, all over the world.
And it really helped, let me tell you. The international box office was booming. Normally, out of the total box office for around the world one-third was from overseas. When I was finished with the whole thing, in the end, my last movie, two times more money came in from overseas than here domestically. And because of that my salary grew and grew and grew, and with "Terminator 3" I became the highest paid actor in the history of the world in show business, and all because of promotion and marketing and making sure that everyone knows that your product is around. So I know firsthand how important it is to be a businessman and to market.
And of course the money that I made, unlike some of those Hollywood celebrities that just go buy one house after the other, or one fast car after the other, I went and invested that money, invested it wisely in real estate, in restaurants, leasing companies, all kinds of investments. And all of which, I can tell you, was a long way from the early days of bodybuilding when I was doing construction work and bricklaying jobs to make enough money so I could afford my food supplements. So only in America, may I remind you. (Laughter) Go ahead. I just want to make sure of that. So business has always been very interesting to me.
Finally I got into government. Now, I wish I could say that government was run like a business. (Laughter) Well, I guess it is, if you mean business like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or AIG. (Laughter) Then it's a different ballgame. It is true that in government you deal with bonds, with revenues, capital improvements, labor contracts and you also have shareholders, which are your citizens. But let's face it, the way that Congress or the state Legislature operates will get a business indicted for Ponzi schemes and for malfeasance or sued for false advertisement.
And one thing that I have been trying to do every since I've gotten into government is the same thing that businesses do, which corporate CEOs must address all the time, and that is to create a vision, a vision for where you want to take your organization. And the same is when you run a state. You have to create a vision of where you're going to take the state, because decisions have to be made that are short-term decisions, but then other decisions have to be long-term decisions. What kind of -- how do we create safe and reliable water, for instance, in California for 30, 40, 50 years from now?
So it was very important, and this is to create a vision that is important for the future of the state. And my vision, of course, always was, how do we pump up the economy and pump up the environment at the same time? And this is something I want to talk to you about here today.
As you know, in the 20th century wealth and prosperity was fueled by what today would be considered dirty oil, dirty steel, dirty cars, dirty factories. Now, we had millions of workers and investors that were supporting those industries and they prospered. But that century is gone, and what we have learned is that it took a tremendous toll on our environment.
But now we face a moment in history where we can begin to reverse actually the damage and to create a new economic foundation for the 21st century, a foundation that is built on clean fuel, on clean cars, on clean factories and on clean energy. And of course this is not going to happen from one year to the next. It will take maybe a decade, maybe it takes two decades.
So we have before us an incredible economic opportunity. What many people don’t recognize is that climate change is not just about climate, but it is also about business opportunities. It is about who will be the economic leaders in the years ahead. The technology writer of the Associated Press recently wrote an article entitled "The Next Big Thing Could Be Green." He compared clean technology to the railroads, to the automobiles and the internet, the kind of breakthrough that emerges every so often and builds industries, generates jobs and men's fortunes. The dateline of the article was San Francisco. This is, of course, no coincidence, because Silicon Valley is just south of San Francisco, and Silicon Valley believes that green tech is the next big thing.
We are going full speed ahead on green technology in our state, in California. We already lead the nation in the number of clean energy businesses, with a number of more than 10,000. Nearly half of all venture capital in America flows to California, and that is why we hold also more than 40 percent of the nation's patents, the new patents in solar and wind technology.
I've seen solar power making snack chips at the Frito-Lay factory in the Central Valley. I've seen solar panels on top of warehouses and business buildings in Fontana, California, part of Southern California Edison's plan to install 65 million square feet of solar on rooftops of businesses and of warehouses all around the state. That is enough to cover 1,100 football fields and power 165,000 homes. So this is a huge, huge progress we're making in California. They also signed a contract for a solar plant in the Mojave Desert that will supply slightly more energy than a modern nuclear power plant. Companies are standing in line right now to put solar installations in the Mojave. We just reached an agreement with the Department of the Interior in Washington to speed up the permitting process.
Leaders from around the world are coming now to California to see what's going on and what we are doing there. I took the French foreign trade minister just recently to a business in San Francisco called Solazyme. They've come up with a way to convert algae into fuel that is 90 percent cleaner than petroleum-based fuel. As a matter of fact, the United States Navy has just signed a contract with them to power their vessels. And also, because that has been successful, they now are going to use that fuel also for jets -- 90 percent cleaner with CO2.
In California we are trying to lead the way, which is good for our state, good for our economic future, good for our country and good also for our environment. The country needs leadership in the environment, there are no two ways about it, and I know that President Obama is marching in the right direction. A recent survey asked people in various different nations, how high a priority do you think government should place on addressing climate change? Now, in America, the American people came in lower than the people in Iraq and the people in the Palestinian territories. Think about that. Now, of course, the survey was not taken in California, because I can guarantee you, in California it would be amongst the top three of importance, because we believe in the environment.
As I have said many times before, people don't want to live like Buddhist monks, to give up their big-screen plasma TVs or their Jacuzzis. The only thing is that you can also power the big-screen TVs and the Jacuzzis with renewable energy. It is shameful that our nation now gets less than 3 percent of its energy from renewable fuels -- less than 3 percent. We in California now get 15 percent of renewables, and by the end of next year we will have 20 percent. And we just signed into law that we will have by the year 2020 33 percent of renewables. Now, if you add hydropower to that, then we'll have 45 percent by the year 2020. So this is the kind of progress we are making in our state, and that's the kind of leadership we would need also nationwide.
In Denmark, for instance, they get 20 percent of their power from wind, just because they stayed with it for more than 20 years, even when it wasn't popular or appealing, and even when the oil prices were down. And now one in three wind turbines worldwide is from Denmark. Germany leads the world when it comes to solar power. It should be the United States that should lead in that area. France gets nearly 80 percent of their energy from nuclear; too bad that America doesn't. Brazil is big on biofuel.
And they all got to where they are by making a commitment to clean energy and not wavering. In the United States our domestic energy policy and our environmental policy is all over the place. More and more businesses are realizing the importance of going green and they have put pressure on government to come up with legislation to pave the way for America's environmental future. Now, this is very rare that you see businesses putting the pressure on government to go and come up with environmental laws. And I hope that the chamber of commerce in the United States also listens to that. It's very important that they work with the White House and with our federal government.
Now, here's the way I look at it. Some people say, why should the United States go first? China pumps out more greenhouse gases than we do and they didn't sign the Kyoto Treaty or commit itself to anything. Why should we? Did we ever have that mentality before, where we say to someone else, you go first? I mean, think about human rights. Did we go to China and say you go first, then we'll go? When it comes to landing a man on the moon, did we go and say to Russia, you go first to see if it's safe, and then we'll go? When it comes to developing the computer did we say to Japan, you go first to see if it is profitable? No, we didn't. We always went first.
There's a value of going first and to being first. America has always gone first. That is why we are the greatest county in the world. This country has always led and inspired people to look ahead, over the next mountain range, over the next prairie, over the next desert, all the way to the ocean. We didn't wait; we went. We didn't hold back; we held forth.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Henry Luce, the founding publisher of Time-Life said, "Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight." This business school here in Georgetown and this new building are a testament to looking to the future. And that is what the United States must do. We must look to the future, we must welcome the future and we must reach the future first.
Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)
DEAN DALY: Governor Schwarzenegger, thank you very much for those words. And in honor of you and in appreciation of your being here with us I wanted to present you with this Dean's Medal, which you can see. Thank you very, very much.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause) Thank you very much. Obviously I have in my life gotten a lot of trophies and awards and medals, but without any doubt this is the most recent. (Laughter) No, thank you very much, I really appreciate that. It's great to be back again, OK? And I'll be back. Thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)
