My Story Getting Fired - UPDATED [0:00:00]
Today’s video, gents, a little bit different. I want to share with you my story of getting
fired, not being able to find a job, going through a bankruptcy, going through some tough
times. I know for me, this was something, it was
one of the darkest times of my life going through this a couple of years in which I
didn’t really know if I was going to make it, how we were going to make this happen.
So, I want to share with you this story because hopefully you’re able to gain some insight,
maybe just know that you’re not alone in going through these struggles.
[Music] So, the story starts back in 2004, and I just
left the United States Marine Corps. I was living in Ukraine with my fiancée at the
time and her parents were wondering what in the world is this guy going to do.
So, I decided, you know what? I am going to go to business school. I got accepted to the
University of Texas in 2004, ended up going in 2005. And it was tough because I left my
son and I left my wife back in Ukraine and I said, “You know what? For two years I’m
going to make this happen, I’m going to study hard.”
I learned a lot in theory about business, but one thing I did pick up on is that these
people were here to get great jobs. So, at business school, what you see is all these
people applying to get internships and eventually jobs with these high-end companies; Goldman
Sachs, McKinsey, Bain. And, I really felt behind the power curve
because I didn’t understand how any of the work and my internship that year, I didn’t
want to spend away from my son and my wife. So, I went back to Ukraine, I kind of designed
my own thing, but basically I didn’t make any money and I was really worried as to what
I was going to do in 2007 when I’m graduating because I didn’t have a job lined up.
So, I was at a party and a friend of mine, he introduced me to some family friends that
own a business up in Wisconsin. And I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to go
up there and give a presentation and see where this goes.” They were interested in speaking
with me and I moved myself, I bought a house, and I committed to working for these guys
for three years to help turn the company around and it turned out to be a pretty good offer.
I was going to get 10% of the company. I worked like a dog. For the first three months,
ten to twelve hours a day, six days a week, but I felt that I was investing in this company.
And by the way, the company was an interesting one, they made wet wipes. Yes, the ones that
you use to wipe your ass. That didn’t excite me, but what did excite me is the fact that
they were making these other wipes. This one was for camera lenses. And I was into photography
at the time, so I thought I knew how much photographers willing to pay to be able to
keep their lenses and take good care of them. They also had this other company that they
were working with making these wipes that smelt like dirt. Now, here is how it work
is that if you’re a hunter, you don’t want your gear to have a smell to it. So,
you would actually wipe down yourself in all of your gear to smell really bad, so that,
yeah, you wouldn’t basically give off the scent that would scare the deer.
I’m excited, I’m trying to make all the stuff happen come up with all these new ideas
and theories and I call up a meeting. I’m like, “Hey. It’s been three months. I
want to tell you guys where I’m at, what I’m excited about where we’re going to
go.” I remember this day. I called up the meeting,
have the three owners come into this meeting and in that meeting they fired me. I did not
see this coming. I really felt like, “Oh, my gosh, like what in the world just happened?”
I’m going to share with you guys where I was fired about 15 meters right over here.
Here’s the factory. Here’s the exact place where I was fired back in the late 2007. I
had this crazy idea that you could go online and you could create content and people would
find you that we should be blogging that we should sell directly to the customer.
I went in there with all of these ideas and they didn’t see it. I remember being shocked.
Then, that shock turned into anger. Who were these people that would – that would do
this that were so stupid they couldn’t see the future? You know that anger then turned
to fear because I didn’t know how, my family was moving. In fact, three weeks I was supposed
to go pick them up and we were taking a trip over to Croatia, a vacation. How could I afford
this? I started reaching out, looking for other
jobs, couldn’t get anything. I was so embarrassed that I did not tell my wife what was going
on. I thought, gosh, I’ve got to find a way to get myself out of this hole. I just
didn’t tell anybody until I got over to Ukraine and I just her down and I said, “I’m
bringing you to this country, bring to the United States. I don’t have a job anymore.
I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I was panicking.
I thought she may leave me, but you know what? She didn’t. She said, “Hey, we’re going
to find a way. We’re going to take this trip. We’re going to enjoy our vacation
and you’ll figure things out.” And, she was exactly right.
And, if you’re watching this video, you are not defined by what happens to you especially
in circumstances you can’t control. I know a lot of you guys have lost your job because
you know of what’s going on right now in the world. This does not define you or your
future. Maybe you did something stupid like I did.
[0:05:00] But, here’s the thing, there is opportunity
out there. My wife said, “You know what? You have these ideas for all these other businesses.
How about we look at this like come up with some ideas?” And that’s when in Croatia,
I jumped online and I saw that there were these companies selling custom suits online.
And I knew that this was something I was really interested in because I bought my first custom
suit when I was in Ukraine whenever I was at business school and I’m just fascinated
by the idea I thought, “Okay.” I calmed down and I realized that there was something
else out there. So, I found in my first company in 2007. We
returned to the United States and I spent what little money I had trying to build a
website, A Tailored Suit. You can Google it. It’s still out there. But, you know that
business did not succeed. I’ll tell you, I put my heart and soul. My wife put her heart
and soul into trying to make that company a go for three years.
And, at one point we had $100,000 a month coming into that business, but we had $105,000
going out in expenses. I can tell you that doesn’t scale. And, we realized how bad
this was when I was, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and I hadn’t
declared bankruptcy because I couldn’t figure out a way out of this thing.
But, here’s the thing is because I’ve already been fired because we had already
gone through all these tough times, the bankruptcy actually wasn’t as bad as I thought. It
was embarrassing, it was tough, but I realized, you know what? There are some amazing things
coming out of this. One is that we actually were getting traffic
to the website. I realized I was good at creating content. I actually enjoyed writing and talking
to people about men’s style, so maybe there’s an opportunity here. I started writing for
this blog called the Art of Manliness. You’ve probably heard or you’ve seen some of my
articles over there. And, Brett loved my stuff. In fact, he was
telling me, “Tony, what you’re writing here, this is getting some of the best traffic
on the website. Please keep giving it to me.” I created my own blog, not only had A Tailored
Suit, but also a new website called Real Men Real Style. You may have heard of it. But,
I didn’t like to write. What I like to do is create video. And I saw
this guy, Aaron Marino making these videos and I’m like, “You know what? I can make
videos better than this guy.” I started just making all these videos. I said, “You
know what? I’m going to do at least a hundred. I’m going to give it a good shot.”
And I ended up making two hundred videos and guess what? I got a million views on these
two hundred videos. It took me a full year to do it, but my goodness, we’re getting
all of these traffic. And then, I started talking with Aaron. Aaron
became my friend and I kept making these videos and he said, “You know what? You should
actually charge people money for advertising on the videos.” I’m like, “Ah, are they
really going to pay?” And so, I had a shoe company, Paul Evans, my first sponsor ever.
I said, “You know what? $3,000 and I’ll do the second video,” because I’ve already
done one video for him and he had asked me immediately to do another one. He paid that
within minutes of me sending him this invoice. Now, I knew right then I’ve got a business.
I started selling courses. I started teaching men how to dress better and we started making
thousands of dollars with these courses, these little ebooks that we’re selling for like
$47, $97, $200. Gentlemen, all of a sudden these wins started
coming. Now, I’m not going to lie. It took me years to figure this stuff out, but I had
people I had family and friends that were around me supporting me. I gave myself runway.
I live in this small town and I didn’t have a whole lot of expenses.
To this day, my monthly expenses are just over $2,000. I got the same truck that I’ve
had for twenty two years. I buy all my cars now cash. My house is paid for. Why? Because
for me going through that bankruptcy, it really branded me that if I can’t pay cash for
it, I can’t afford it. And, I’m just very, very frugal.
With Aaron I created the conference, Menfluential. I created the media company, Menfluential
which went on to becoming incredibly profitable and very – my most successful business ever.
Real Men Real Style, we kept making these videos. All of a sudden, we’re getting,
you know, 20 million visitors, 100 million visitors. I’m passing 1,000 videos, 1,500
videos. We had our first million dollar year, then we had our second million dollar year,
our third million dollar year. It has been something that because of everything
we did, because of getting fired, I am not working at this factory making butt wipes
you know. It’s like if these guys would not have fired me, I wouldn’t be making
these videos right now. I wouldn’t have been able to connect with millions of men
around the world and have been able to teach so many guys how to tuck in their shirts,
how to roll their shirt sleeves, how to become the man they know themselves to be.
Diamonds are formed because of heat and pressure. Think about Gandhi. That guy if he hadn’t
have been mistreated in South Africa, he would have probably gone on to be a very successful
warrior. But, it was getting kicked off that train being treated like crap again and again
in South Africa for him to see I’m going to make change here.
He lived in South Africa I think for 21 years honing his craft and learning about basically
how to work assemble, you know, peaceful, you know, disobedience and being able to go
in there. And then, he took that to India and transformed the world.
You getting fired, you losing your job, you not being able to find work, what does this
going to do to you? Is it going to be something that you’re going to retreat into your shell
that you are going to become bitter and hatred or are you going to become the man you know
yourself to be? [0:10:10]
Are you going to buckle down? Are you going to invest in your education? Are you going
to read those books? Are you going to watch those videos? Are you going to go through
and do the reps to improve your body to improve your mind to go out there and finally start
that company that you wanted to start? Get that nonprofit off the ground. Do what you
want to do with your life. Gentlemen, I invite you to do the latter,
to not fall into the hatred to not fall into the, you know, the trap which it’s very
easy, all of us have gone through it. And, instead to find way to realize your true potential
and to become the man you know yourself to be.
Now, gents, I’m going to ask a favor of you. If you’ve lost your job, if you’ve
lost your business, if you’re scared about losing your job, I want to hear from you down
in the comments. Because you see when you share pain, when you let other people know
what’s going on, all of a sudden they don’t feel alone because there are millions of people
out there right now who have lost their job and been fired for no good reason.
They’ve been laid off or collecting unemployment and they aren’t feeling too good about themselves.
They can’t even find a job and yet they were in demand and they’ve got some great
degree. And, this is something that really can affect our self-esteem.
But, when you share with others what’s going on and you let them know that they’re not
alone, it forms deeper connections and it doesn’t depress other people. It actually
makes them feel better that they know that they’re not alone out there.
Now, I’ll tell you here at Real Men Real Style, we’re doing okay, but we definitely
I’ll tell you, profits are down significantly. You know, it’s not something I’m going
to have to lay people off, but I have asked people on my team to take a pay cut. I took
a significant pay cut. It’s something that, hey, ad revenue is down. But, this right here
is bringing us closer together. And I know that many of you guys out there
are suffering, are going through this tough time. You guys know I love you, I care about
you. You are important. This depression this recession whatever is going to happen, this
is not going to define you. This is going to be – this is going to be part of your
legend and this is going to be part of your story.
Thirty years from now when you’re telling your kids about how you went off to be able
to find your calling in life, you went off to be able to do great things, this is going
to be one of those points that set you off. And, yeah, this is it’s going to be something
we’re going to look back on and we are going to be proud of the way we recovered the way
that we reacted and dealt with the current situation.
[0:12:31] End of audio