Gentlemen, Antonio here.
Today, I'm going to talk about five style tips I picked up in the United States Marine
Corps.
Now, whenever I got out of the marines I ended up going to business school living abroad,
I was always surprised how many men for some reason felt that if you care about how you
dress if you improve your style, somehow this is making you less of a man, somehow it is
feminine- related to actually care about our presentation and that if you are dressing
sharp and you're upping your style game, that either you're looking for another job or they
may be start to question your sexuality.
Guys, I have no idea where this comes from.
If you look throughout history the most ferocious the most dangerous warriors and all these
people throughout history they care about how they present themselves.
You look at modern day athletes, the top athletes the ones that realize, you know, when I'm
there in front of the press at a news conference, it actually matters how I present myself,
so I can control the story which is being portrayed.
And, guys, that's about that's what style is about, you being able to control the message
control what your image is sending so that you can get your bigger message across.
Now, in this video, guys, I'm going to share with you five tips I think you're going to
find them useful, but remember if you want more go check out the article.
In the article I go into a lot more detail and in fact, I've got five additional bonus
ones I'm not going to cover here, but if you want to learn more definitely go check that
out.
All right?
Let's get into it.
So, tip number one.
Your presentation matters.
Sounds incredibly simple, guys, but you would not believe how many people still believe
how they dress hasn't -- shouldn't have no effect should have, you know, come on, judge
me based off my performance.
I hear this all the time.
If anyone is judging me based off of how I look, they are shallow and I'm in the right.
And, I know that sounds great and I want that to be true, but that is not reality, that's
not the world that's ignoring our human nature to make split second decisions off of what
we see.
Now, when I was in Marine Corps, I remember I got really sick one time.
I'm at NAS Pensacola and you weren't allowed to wear your flight suit, so I'm wearing a
different uniform I'm wearing my cammies into the doctor's office.
And, I'm just surprised as I'm walking up there, all of these enlisted marines who were
not saluting me, they were actually kind of giving me a strange look.
And, I didn't think much of it, I'm sick I walk in and then I realized when I get home,
I was wearing my uniform with no rank insignia.
Now, that's pretty obvious in the military that we make decisions who we're going to
salute, who we're going to call sir, who we are going to call by their rank and give them
respect based off of their rank insignia.
In the civilian world, does that exist?
You bet it does and it's not as easy to see, but we have visions of what a successful doctor
looks like, of what a successful engineer looks like, of what a successful student looks
like and if you don't dress for that vision that people have in their head, you are betraying
their expectations and their level of trust their level of belief in you is going to go
down.
I just saw a guy the other day dressed incredibly bad, I was kind of wondering, man, should
I buy this guy's meal.
Turns out he's driving a beautiful truck and I'm sure he was doing really well, but he
betrayed my expectation of what a successful person who can actually buy their own food
looks like.
And I know that's not necessarily right, but oftentimes it is an indicator there's a reason
why we fall back on.
And so, guys, understand that the way you present yourself to the world matters and
it matters a lot.
Tip number two, learn from the best.
There's always a guy out there that seems like he's hacked the system that has secrets
and is somehow saving time, but still looking sharp.
We had a marine like this is OCS and the guy basically would sleep all night, yet in the
morning after all of us had been up all night ironing our uniform shining our boots, his
stuff would still be immaculate and he would just cruise right through the inspection.
It turns out he was a mustang and he knew that he needed to have an extra set of boots
and extra uniform that was nothing more than simply an inspection uniform that he had ready.
Guys, when people have secrets like that you want to leverage them.
One of my favorite secrets which I still use to this day coming out of the Marine Corps
is to use shirt garters.
So, shirt garters will keep your shirt tucked in no matter the situation, guys.
So, right up here you got two tabs, they're going to attach to the top of the shirt.
This is going to attach to your socks, this is going to run down your leg and basically
it's a little bit elastic right here and it's going to keep your socks up and most importantly
though it's going to keep your shirt tucked in.
So, if you're a little bit bigger and your shirt is coming untucked all the time this
is a lifesaver.
If you take care of yourself and you're tired of that muffin top, this is going to make
you look great.
We would use this during when you had to wear your Alphas or other dress uniforms whenever
you're getting ready for the Marine Corps ball and you're going to be taking your shirt
off maybe a little bit later at that bar and partying it up and you wanted still to look
great, that's what these are going to do.
Guys, and I want you to go check out KK & Jay, that's the company that send me this because
two years ago they sent me some of these and I still use them and they're still in good
shape.
I really like KK & Jay because they've actually taken the idea that many police officers know
that all branches of the military in their dress uniforms we all know about these and
the actually made it a little bit wider, they actually added a bit of color so it looks
pretty cool.
They make them right here in the United States out in New York City and I know the founders,
really great guys.
So, tip number three.
The details matter.
So, we're about to go out to the Marine Corps ball and I remember a friend of mine stopped
another marine and he said, Hey, wait a minute.
You know your your ribbons.
And I didn't spot this, but he was able to spot how his ribbons were actually on a bit
wrong, they weren't measured correctly and this is the first time we're getting dressed.
And, you may think I bet if he had gone out very few people would have noticed, but he
would have been embarrassed if let's say a general or someone that, you know, high ranking
senior enlisted would have come over and say, you know, Sir, let me help you out here.
He realized that those little details matter and he was able to spot something that may
be was off by about half an inch, but still the details matter.
And, I'll tell you why they matter because that same marine if he's working on a helicopter
and I actually -- this is a true story, we actually saw where I think it was a washer
or something was put on wrong, it was put on backwards.
A very small detail on the tail rotor of a helicopter ended up causing instability and
the thing basically broke off and really injured a number of marines.
That is why attention to detail matters.
It's something that spreads around because if you pay attention to the way you dress
and the details that go into that, you pay attention to the way you write, you pay attention
to the way you run your business, you pay attention to the way you treat people and
those details matter.
Life is nothing more than all of the details are brought together.
Tip number four.
Always have your equipment ready.
So, I remember coming back from my first deployment.
We've been out six months and your family is there waiting to see, everyone's excited,
but before you go home, guess what you need to do?
You need to go to the armory, you need to make sure that your weapon is clean, you need
to make sure it's properly catalogued, everything is put away and basically we are ready to
go back out if necessary before we go home and rest.
So, guys, what you don't want to do is don't fall into the habit of coming home and then
just relaxing and not being prepared for the next day.
One of the things I really highly recommend men do is be prepared, get a valet have your
clothing laid out the night before.
Press your shirts the night before.
Shine your shoes the night or even the week before.
Have everything set up.
Prepare for because there are going to be times and many of you guys that have kids
you understand this happens.
Kids get sick in the middle of the night, you're up all night and you oversleep and
all of a sudden you realized you've got fifteen minutes to get yourself ready and three kids.
And if you do not have things lined up, you're not going to have time to shine your shoes,
you're not going to have time to find the tie and match it with your shirt, so be prepared
and whenever the unexpected happens, guys, you will be ready for it.
Tip number five.
Appreciate your history.
So, many of you, guys may have noticed throughout this video, I'm wearing a boutonniere.
I'm wearing a flower on my lapel and many men wouldn't do that, they feel that oh, well,
that's somehow a bit feminine or that's, you know, why would I wear a flower, only women
wear flowers.
Guys, nothing could be further from the truth if you understand the history of the boutonniere,
where it comes from all of a sudden you realize nothing could be more masculine.
A little bit of the history, let's go back to the medieval times, knights when they were
going off into combat.
The women that love them; their mothers, their daughters, their wives would pin flowers on
them as a symbol of how frail life is.
We go back to World War I, French soldiers going off to fight in the trenches many of
whom never returned.
They have pictures of this of them just pinning flowers on them.
To this day, the red poppies symbolize the World War I and all the lives lost.
When you realize that that's what flowers symbolize on a man, you start to realize,
you know, I have the courage to wear it.
And that's the last thing I'm going to leave you guys with is have the courage to lead,
have the courage to be the best-dressed man in the room.
And when you understand history where you know where you come from and you have a rock
to stand on and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world is doing, it matters where
you know that you've your grandfather has been your great great grandfather, perhaps
looking back you can build off of that and you have the courage to go forward and be
the man you know yourself to be.
Now, guys, I want you to go check out the support article, I go into more details and
in fact, I've got five bonus tips I additional, so that means ten I learned in the Marine
Corps.
In addition, I have an extra set of okay, I want you, guys, to take a look at this one
because it is not this one, they sent me an extra one and I want to send it to somebody
out there.
Just go visit their website, I'm going to link to it right over here and I want you,
guys to try to guess, I'll give you the colors, it is mostly blue, it has some yellow and
some red.
If you can guess it, you know, I'll look at all the people that, you know, guessed correctly
and I'm going to choose one maybe two winners.
And, I'll go ahead and send you, guys, out some of these because I find that they are
lifesaver, it's one of my favorite secrets.
And, guys, that's it, hopefully you enjoy this video.
Let me know what you think in the comments and I'll see you in the next video.