Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 6 Blogging Rules Of Success

In 2009, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a commencement speech at the University of Southern California that went viral. It’s called The 6 Rules Of Success and now I present to you Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 6 Rules Of Blogging Success.

Obviously, this article is inspired by the speech and Arnold is not a blogger, however, success principles transcend genres, okay, with that said, let’s rock and roll.

Schwarzenegger: 6 Rules Of Success (Applied To Blogging)

For those that don’t know, the trajectory of Arnold’s life is incredible. Born in an Austrian village, he determined as a teenager he was going to become the greatest bodybuilder of all-time, move to America, and then become the biggest Hollywood movie star.

People thought he was nuts. Wouldn’t you too? He didn’t even speak English.

The original rules from the speech are 1.) Trust Yourself 2.) Break Rules 3.) Don’t Be Afraid To Fail 4.) Ignore Naysayers 5.) Work Like Heck 6.) Give Back.

The YouTube video is worth a watch:

Now, we modify for blogging.

Rule #1: Trust Yourself; Trust Your Blog

I have a vision of being the #1 blogger in the New Golden Age of Blogging and being a NYT bestselling author. What is your vision? You must set it and never let it go. You must set the vision for what you want and trust that you can achieve it.

The starting point is to trust your blog. You chose the niche for a reason, you believed in it. Trust usually starts to wane during the launch phase which can last 6 – 12 months. That’s when you need to trust the blog the most. You will need to embrace suffering to build your blog. Trust the process. Trust the plan. Trust the blog.

• Don’t be “realistic.” Realistic doesn’t achieve dreams. Realistic doesn’t achieve worthwhile goals. Realistic doesn’t allow you to cross items off from your bucket list. All realistic leads to is living life on your knees.
• Trust that you can learn. A lot goes into winning the blogging game, trust that you can methodically learn everything you need step-by-step. WordPress, Focus Theme, SEO strategy, AI, traffic from 3rd party platforms, email lists, writing.
• Trust your vision. Having the vision alone dramatically increases odds of success. Most are too afraid to even envision a future of freedom via a laptop and an online blogging business. This puts you among the top already.

Rule #2: Break Rules

Break rules, not laws.

Here are some “rules” in the blogging game I enjoy breaking daily:

• “Audiences these days have attention spans of goldfish!” I do not write articles for goldfish. I write long articles for those who admire the written word. Goldfish admire Tik Tok brainrot. Goldfish do not read blogs. They are incapable of the higher-level thinking blogs require. The reason you, dear reader, find that many blogs suck and are, frankly, insulting to your intelligence is because the authors bought the “goldfish attention span” lie. I recommend the opposite: long, dense articles for an audience that knows how to read. My strategy seems to be working.
• “People are more dumberer! Write down to the normies!” Close cousin to the “goldfish attention span” lie. The root cause is there’s a herd of independent thinkers who all think the same thing and think they are smarter than everybody else; they’re really loud and annoying on Twitter. These folks’ favorite pastime is to announce they aren’t watching the Super Bowl this year. I haven’t seen anything to suggest people are any more dumberer now than 50 years ago and I’m not about to write at a third grade level because user “Copywriting Lambo Chad 69 – Buy Course In Bio” on Twitter says so. My assumption is my target audience is at least as smart as I am and I write for that.
• “Everybody skims, so write articles that are easily skimmable!” First, it’s not skimming, it’s skipping. Second, readers only skip the writing that shouldn’t have been written in the first place. A writer that writes skimmable articles is a bad writer, unable to write words a reader wants to read. I’ve followed plenty of bloggers over the years where I read literally every single word of their articles because they are good.
• “Paragraphs have to be short!” Why? Anybody that has poked around my blog knows I am not afraid to write massive paragraphs of text. I don’t have a rule for or against big paragraphs. I just write what the words need to properly express themselves. And that is rarely twenty-seven single sentence paragraphs in a row (with an ad squeezed between each one). You will be told short paragraphs are needed for readability. Well, as I said before, my blog has high readability because I write for people who know how to read.
• “Write short punchy sentences like Hemingway!” Most people who say this have never cracked open a Hemingway book in their life and it shows. At the time Hemingway wrote, his sentences were considered short and punchy compared to popular writing of the time. A Hemingway novel is closer to Shakespeare than modern writing is to Hemingway. If you read Hemingway you will see the people who say “write like Hemingway” or “use the Hemingway app” are not even remotely close to writing with the complexities of a Hemingway sentence and it’s embarrassing they do not even realize this. I’d say they are closer to Cat In The Hat, although that’d be unfair to Dr. Seuss. The only thing the “write like Hemingway” crowd can do is write the most bland sentences you have ever read in your entire life.
• “Keywords, Keywords, Keywords!” Google doesn’t fall for that crap anymore, keywords are only important in the sense that you have to use something in your title and it makes sense if you include words that describe what your article is about. But using the phrase “make money online” a thousand times in your articles isn’t going to move the needle. I write articles for readers and don’t worry one bit about trying to game Google’s system, which interestly enough is the best way to get ranked by Google (along with simple on-page SEO best practices).
• And, of course, “blogging is dead!” Well, hello from the afterlife.

Rule #3: Don’t Be Afraid To Fail

There will be blogging false starts. It might take a few tries before you come across the correct blog for you. It’s okay to take your blogging shot and fail. I’ve failed with about a dozen blogs since I haphazardly launched my first one in 2013.

I know I said in Rule #1 to “trust your blog” and it may sound like a contradiction to say “don’t be afraid to fail, but it’s not. Sometimes trust your blog is listening to it when it says “I’m not the blog for you, move on.”

You’ll know your blog is telling you this when you can’t think of anything to write and you’ll be asking yourself why the heck you started a music blog when you don’t even want to write about it.

Most likely you fell into the common trap of blogging about your interests instead of your strengths. It’s okay, admit it, learn lessons, move on, fail forward, yadda yadda yadda. Don’t be afraid to mark it down as a failure and let the domain name quietly expire. Launching a blog and failing will give infinitely more blogging knowledge than reading every blog article and book you can get your hands on.

You’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll be able to spin up the next blog after a failure.

Rule #4: Ignore Naysayers (Especially The Ones Inside Your Head)

“You are wasting time that could be better spent elsewhere on your health and family.” Do you know who said that? Yeah, the voice inside my head. I find much of the “naysaying” is imagined.

My wife is supportive. My children are positively influenced, sitting down next to me creating their own stories with their arts and crafts supplies. Outside of them I don’t really care about anybody else’s opinion. Yet I still have that nagging voice that doesn’t want me to succeed, and gives me good reasons why I should quit. Common naysaying reasons include:

• You could be spending mornings working out and getting fit rather than sitting around and writing.
• You could be spending more time engaged with your family.
• You could be delivering Door Dash and making some extra cash instead of waiting for blog money, which may never come through.
• You could be taking care of all those little handyman projects around the house and be living in a perfectly kept household.
• You could be training for a marathon. “Finish a marathon” has been on your bucket list for about 15 years.

I think the naysaying is just the loser in me trying to come out. In another article somewhere on this blog I wrote about how we all have a Mr. Victory and a Mr. Defeat in our thinking factory, those thoughts must be coming from Mr. Defeat when I allow him to take over the thinking buttons and levers. I really need to fire that guy.

You may have real naysayers in your life, though.

Teenage Arnold sure did when he announced he was going to be the greatest bodybuilder of all time and then move to America to become a movie star. The same type of naysaying you may face when you announce you are going to become an uber successful full-time blogger and then crack the New York Times bestselling list for a novel. So what?

Naysaying happens because others feel threatened you are trying to make something of yourself, and if you achieve any type of success at all, their reasons for being unable to achieve higher level goals is seen for what it is–excuses.

Rule #5: Work Like (Heck)

Wishful thinking ain’t gonna achieve blogging dreams. It’s going to take hard, hard work and there is no shortcut.

I suggest waking up at 5:00am in order to get a three hour writing session in prior to getting ready for work (assuming a 9 – 5 job is in play). Then finding another 30 minutes, an hour if possible, in the evening for a little more writing. And then, drifting off to sleep with a book in your hand. Also, listen to a relevant audiobook during your commute.

If you are going to win the blogging game you must put in at least 20 hours per week, but more is better. With a full time job, it’s possible to work 30 hours a week on your blog. Working an hour a day on your blog is not going to lead to success.

You think Arnold became the greatest bodybuilder of all-time, millionaire via his businesses (before he was a movie star), among the highest-paid movie stars, governor of California, and #1 NYT bestselling author because he kept himself at a slow and steady pace?

Rule #6: Give Back

Once success is achieved, send the ladder back down. Help out other bloggers who are working hard who haven’t achieved success yet. This is as simple as giving them a shout-out and a link.

It could be mentoring them, dropping a comment every now and then, or giving them a timely tip.

It also could have nothing to do with blogging. When you are free via your blog, you can volunteer for worthwhile causes such as saving manatees, cleaning up your neighborhood, or coaching the little league baseball team.

Moving Forward With Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 6 Rules of Success

Return to this article every now and then to refresh your mind in what you need to do to achieve your vision: 1.) Trust Yourself 2.) Break Rules 3.) Don’t Be Afraid To Fail 4.) Ignore Naysayers 5.) Work Like Heck 6.) Give Back.

I believe the field of blogging success is wide open right now. I even wrote a blog article about it called Why Financial Success In Starting A Blog Now Could Be At An All-Time High. Following the 6 rules will lead to, with high probability of success, in my opinion, a full-time career in blogging and freedom.

Time to get to work. Blog on, friend. Blog on.