Antonio's Secret To Getting Ahead in Life - Be A Go Giver - Proper Gentleman Behavior
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be giving you a quick tip for getting ahead in life.
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This isn't so much about style today, but it's very much related because I get a lot
of emails, a lot of people asking me, "Antonio, can you help me?"
"Antonio, can you give me advice here?"
"Antonio, how are you doing this?
How are you doing that?"
So I want to share with you guys one of my secrets and how I have managed to, I think,
have a beautiful family, have a really hot wife.
I mean, I've had so many great things happen to me in my life and this is the one tip that
whenever people often ask me, "What one tip would you give somebody young or somebody
old or somebody just struggling in order to get ahead?
What would you do?"
That one tip is to give it all away.
What do I mean by that?
When I say give it all away, I mean I want you to be a giver like that old Christmas
saying, "It's better to give than to receive."
Take that to heart and whatever talents you have, whatever skills you have, whenever you
have some free time -- and you're not going to just find this free time.
You've got to make it.
You've got to throw away that television time.
You've got to pull yourself away whenever you are not doing what you have to do in life.
You are finding ways to help others.
You're finding ways to give of yourself and to be a go giver.
I was just reading this book, "Go Givers Sell More" and it's about go givers in sales, basically
how to increase sales by giving more.
I would have to say it almost sounds a bit manipulative especially to some people who
think "sales" is a bad word, but at the end of the day, you are selling yourself most
of the time.
You are trying to get a better job.
You're trying to find perhaps the perfect mate.
You're wanting to sell your daughter on the fact that yes, it is smart to go to bed when
I ask you to, not to want to stay up all night and eat candy and watch cartoons, which is
my bout almost every night at 8:00 p.m.
When you give everything you have -- and I'm not talking about all your earthly possessions.
I'm not talking about becoming a monk here, but I'm talking about instead of always asking
for things, instead of always thinking that you deserve things, going out and trying to
help others, going out and invoking basically the law of reciprocity.
Have you ever heard of this?
It's basically when you give something to somebody, they in turn want to give something
back and this is seen across cultures.
That's why whenever you travel, it's always great to have a whole bunch of little trinkets,
little gifts.
It may not mean anything, but you'll find that when you give something to somebody,
no matter how insignificant, they are going to repay it.
When you give your hand for a handshake, most of the time, unless it's Donald Trump, they're
going to give you their hand right back and they're going to shake it.
So you need to be the first person to, if you're visiting someone's home for the first
time -- one tradition I really enjoy is bringing in bread and salt.
It's an Eastern European thing, but when you bring in maybe a bottle of wine -- I like
to bring local things when I go visit my friends in Chicago.
We have homemade maple syrup here.
I have Nueske's meats, some of the best bacons and hams in the world right here in my town,
so I'll take these things with me, not so much the hams because you've got to keep them
refrigerated, but the maple syrup is a great gift to give people because it's homemade.
It's very unique and it just sets everything on the right -- I mean, the whole weekend
we're being treated like kings because I spent ten bucks to buy some extra maple syrup.
You can see where I'm going with this.
I'm going to go ahead and give you a quick story.
Back in 1985, Mexico City had a huge earthquake and it was really, really bad, thousands of
people died.
There was money coming in from all over the place and of all places, Ethiopia sent Mexico
money.
Now, Ethiopia was going through a lot of hardship of its own.
In fact, it was going through a famine.
In fact, thousands and thousands more people were dying in Ethiopia and had been for the
last year because of the weather and the famine they're going through than what had happened
to Mexico, so people were kind of perplexed as to why was Ethiopia sending money to Mexico
when they had their own problems.
They asked a gentleman in the government why did they transfer over this money.
He straightened himself up and he said, "When Ethiopia was invaded by Italy during World
War II, Mexico came to our aid," and that's a great example of the law of reciprocity.
It doesn’t matter how many years go by.
People remember when you sincerely give of yourself and you give to them whatever you
can give.
It doesn’t have to always be money.
Money is nice.
It's something that's pretty universal and could be applied to things, but your time,
clothing, there are so many things that you can give, your talents.
All of us have a unique talent.
If you want to get a hold of someone that's in a higher position at a company or let's
say you see somebody and you aspire to be like them, well, if you go to them and you're
asking, you're probably like the hundreds of other people that they get every month
who are asking for their time, asking to take them out to coffee, to pick their brain.
I hate that expression.
I don't have that time.
I've got three kids.
I've got a wife.
But if you come to my company and you really give of yourself and let's say you've got
a talent with analytics or that you've got a talent with -- you know a whole lot of people
in this industry that really doesn’t have too much to do with mine, but you have seen
how they've applied this and you've prepared this information that will help me look at
my company differently, or perhaps I get a nice handwritten letter and you have made
-- I had one gentleman.
He knows who he is.
He sent me some beautiful music that he made.
I don't know.
It was really nice.
I was listening to it just last night.
My wife comes in and she's like, "Oh, what are you listening to?"
I told her, "This is some music a gentleman who watches my videos sent me."
He made it himself and that's really cool.
Wolf, you know who you are.
It's awesome music and I love it because I feel really a deep connection to this person.
Again, I'm going to end with one more story.
I was up talking with my wife again last night.
It was about this gentleman who recently passed away in Iowa City.
I went to school with his son at Cornell College at Mount Vernon, Iowa.
This man had a history of being a go giver.
I think what really struck me, what made him a gentleman is that he was the kind of guy
that would give to people that there was no way that they could ever repay him.
Here's a story I really love because literally I was reading through all these people that
left comments on his online obituary and there were all of these amazing stories.
I hope whenever my time comes that I will have this type of influence on people, but
this is the story.
There was this little girl.
Now she's a grown woman with her own kids, but she talked about how he changed her outlook
one day when she was like five or six years old.
She fell and she knocked her tooth out.
She was walking across the college campus.
Her mom, I guess, worked there, and she ran into this gentleman.
She was crying.
She was bleeding a little bit here in the mouth and she was just so upset, she told
him, because the tooth fairy was not going to reward her because she had lost her tooth.
He picks her up, he sits her on his lap and he says, "You know, I've got to tell you a
secret."
He pulled her close and he said, "I'm the tooth fairy and I know that your tooth, you
lost it and it was an accident, and because you've been so brave," he pulled out five
bucks.
The woman talked how for years she really believed he was the tooth fairy and it changed
her entire day, changed her entire week, and she talked about this like she could remember
this day.
It was so imprinted on her and had a positive influence on her life.
The amazing part is there were thousands of people that I know this guy had this effect
on because he was always looking to give of himself and he didn’t know where it was
going to take him, but I can tell you that -- he was a big man.
He was a heavyweight wrestler at the University of Iowa.
He also played in the football team back in the '50s or the '60s.
He was a big guy, but he was so small compared to the reputation he built up of himself.
So if you want to get ahead in life, guys, give of yourself.
Give away everything you've got and be a go giver.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
I'll see you guys in the next video.
Bye-bye.