Welcome to another video!
So today I'm going to answer a question I'm asked almost on a weekly basis here on my YouTube channel and that is
Why do I wear a suit?
I'm sure a lot of you have noticed that in a lot of my videos, probably in the majority of them, I walk around wearing a suit and tie.
And, it's been pointed out many times to me that, especially down here in the south of China, where the summers are incredibly hot, that it's fairly impractical to always be in a suit and tie.
So people wonder, why is it that I wear a suit and tie?
Well, there are various reasons why I suggest wearing a suit and tie.
Especially since I more or less work for myself, I can choose what I want to wear.
Well, there are various reasons why I suggest wearing a suit and tie and why I'd personally wear a suit and tie.
But there's a story behind why I do it.
So, I'm going to tell you the story.
And once I've told you the story I'm going to go through a couple of reasons why I suggest that it's a good idea to, at least on occasion, wear a suit and tie.
So, the story goes as follows.
We'll have to go quite a few years back
In, probably down to about the year 2000 or so, maybe 1999 thereabouts when I was working for a big corporation called Murray and Roberts.
They're a construction company, and their head office in South Africa is where I worked
as an IT technician and I did network administrations and that sort of thing.
Now, back in those days, I was wearing pretty much whatever I liked.
And I really did like to wear ex-military surplus jackets and that sort of thing.
You know, and just typical jeans, jackets, t-shirt, that sort of thing, boots.
I used to sit there in the IT support office, and my job was to fix any problems on the servers there, and occasionally I get a phone call.
And I'd had have to go to a user's desk and fix a problem
Maybe they couldn't connect to the network, or their email wasn't working, or they couldn't print, or just whatever the case.
It was a job that I enjoyed and it was a job I was really good at.
But, people always used to treat me, well, fairly badly, to be honest.
I'd pitch up at their desk and I'd say, "Hi, I'm here to fix your printer problem", for instance.
And they'd say, "Okay, sure, just hang on, I have to finish this email", or they'd say "Sorry, I'm busy now, can you come back later".
I very often found myself standing around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for them to finish whatever task they wanted to finish.
So, anyway, this is just the way things operated, and there was a specific guy who was really kind of, fairly rude I suppose.
But he used to call me quite often and I'd go up there and fix his little problems here and there.
He would always kind of put me on hold and send me back.
But one day, I had to go to a wedding, I believe.
Either a wedding or a funeral, I can't really remember, to be honest.
But I had to wear a suit to work because after work I was this, probably a wedding I think.
So, anyway, the same guy calls me up.
And, he has a similar problem with his printer or something.
I arrived at his desk.
First of all, he didn't recognise me, but second of all, I got a completely different reaction out of the guy.
So, I pitched up at his desk and said: "Hello, I'm from the IT department and I'm here to fix your printer problem."
And he said: "Oh! Sure, take a seat! Uh, would you like me to bring you a coffee?".
I was kind of taken aback by the way that the guy was treating me.
But I realized it was 100% down to the way I was dressed because I had arrived at his table dressed in a suit and tie.
And he himself was dressed in a normal shirt.
In fact I was just better dressed than he was.
And so,
The way that I looked almost forced him to respect me as a human being, not just a tool of the office, if you know what I mean.
It was from that day forth that I decided that I would start wearing a suit.
And I did, I started wearing a suit to work.
It got me respect around the office, it got things done.
Now, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there currently watching this video who are about to say:
"Uh! That's shallow! You can't judge people by the way they look! What's inside is important", all that kind of nonsense.
Which, yes, is maybe true in the grander scheme of things.
But in reality, people are shallow, people are judgemental.
Whether you like it or not, you're judgemental and shallow too.
If you see an attractive woman walk by if you're a guy, or an attractive man if you're a woman, you're going to judge them.
You're going to judge them, in your head, you're either going to say: "Wow! She's really good-looking", or "She's a attractive."
If you're a little lower class, you might, you know, give out a catcall or a wolf whistle, some nonsense like that.
But either way, we do judge people on their appearance.
If we look at someone, we can normally judge if they are dangerous,
Or trustworthy
Poor
Rich
Successful, unsuccessful.
There are a lot of things we just automatically judge when we see people.
Now, whether those things are true or not,
You know, nobody can really tell what a person is like until you get to know them.
But, it's all about this first impression that we get of people.
So if you see a guy dressed in a suit and tie standing at a bank teller or something like that, you'd probably think he's fairly successful.
But the guy standing behind him in the sandals and the shorts with the dirty hair, and all that kind of thing, you'd probably think he's a little less successful.
So, my point is, the reason I started wearing suits is because of that one encounter I had with that user at that office I used to work at all those years ago.
But ever since then I've realized that wearing a suit is also about respect.
And, when I say respect, I mean not respect for me, but respect for my clients.
Now, it's really worked in my favour here in China, because in China, image is incredibly important, and they call it face.
And having face or losing face, it's a big part of the culture here.
Because I've always been the better-dressed candidate, I've always gotten the better jobs here,
and that's how I ended up in the whole medical field here, training doctors.
It's because out of the other candidates, I was the only person who wore a suit and tie, and everybody else was just in a t-shirt, and you know, slippers or whatever.
Because the expat community, here at least years ago, it's improving recently,
but years ago it was pretty much washed up old people and washed up people from their countries who couldn't get a job,
backpacking hippies, and things like that.
When applying for a serious job, as in training doctors, and you turn up and you don't look the part, you're not going to get the part.
So that's why here in China I've always found that wearing a suit, you know, it really really helps me and it plays to my advantage.
And of course, that probably can be said for any place in the world.
Anyway, getting back to the whole respect thing,
It shows respect to your clients and this is something I've actually explained in the past.
If I get called in to train this group of doctors, I can go in there, to be honest, here in China, it's so lax, if I really wanted to,
I could just wear a t-shirt, wear some jeans and they'd still enjoy the lesson, they would still be there enjoying my training sessions
And they would still that I was a good trainer, and I'd probably still get a good reputation
and there wouldn't be so much of a big deal
But the fact that I am willing to go through the discomfort of wearing a suit and tie, especially in the summer here,
and actually go there and present myself well to them means that I have enough respect for them
to actually put something good on
whereas if I just went with, you know, jeans and sneakers or something like that, it's just lazy on my part,
it means that they don't matter enough to me, that I will just wear whatever I want, to just walk in there and do my job
and get out of there, and like I said, it shows a lack of respect for my part.
So, that's the other reason why I wear a suit and tie.
And of course, now it's become part of my style.
In fact, if I'm not wearing a suit and tie, I'm pretty much wearing a leather jacket and my riding gear for the channel
or if I'm riding a bike or something, I very rarely wear casual clothes.
And well, there's a good reason for that because you can never be too overdressed
for any situation.
If you arrive at a party or you arrive at a barbeque or something
and you are wearing a suit and everybody else is just kind of casualed up
It's no big deal.
It's quite simple actually, take off the jacket, roll up the sleeves, throw the tie away
and you're smart casual, ready to roll, it's no big deal
Of course, you can't wear a suit if you're going to go hiking or doing some king of extreme sport or something.
That's absolutely absurd.
But just in general, wearing a suit has, for me at least, been incredibly good,
and it's really led to a lot of opportunity I wouldn't have had if I was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans.
Another example is, you're kind of always ready for any situation.
In fact, I've just gotten back from an interview with Guangzhou TV.
An international radio and TV station.
They came down to interview me here
and, no problem, I just slapped on my normal work suit and went and had an interview, and I didn't feel under-dressed
I didn't feel like I was misrepresenting myself or anything like that.
So, it's good to be able to have a suit, first of all, to put on for a special occasion.
But also, if you get invited to a wedding, or get invited to a special event, or you just want to go out on a really nice date
to like a fancy restaurant or something
you don't need to worry that you're going to be under-dressed.
So, yes, wearing a suit is a good idea for many different reasons, and that's my reason for wearing a suit is
to first of all, to get respect from people, strangers that don't know me and
second of all, to give respect that do know me.
Well I certainly hope that helped answer your question as to why I always wear a suit.
I got some pretty cool, interesting videos coming up
A subscriber of mine, by the name of Leroy, has let me use his DJ I-ozmo(???) for the week so
What I'm going to do is
I'm actually going to make a video about this thing
It's, (laughs), it's quite a cool little toy
And I'm going to go shoot
a vlog using this probably
tomorrow, or on the weekend
I'm going to show you what this thing is all about
It's quite an interesting thing
Of course, I've always got lot's of videos in the pipeline.
But please, if you would like me to talk about a specific topic,
or you would like to see something here in China,
please leave a comment down below and
a request, and I'll do it!
I'll see you guys very soon in the next video
and as always, thank you for watching
and...
STAY AWESOME!!!!!!