The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 123. How Men Can Instantly Look More Attractive ｜ Tanner Guzy

00:00:00.000 The things that you want to convey with your clothing and with your style are very different

00:00:03.960 than the things that I want to convey. And it becomes really easy to see, especially older men.

00:00:08.740 If you ever see an older guy that's in like his fifties and he looks like he's trying to dress

00:00:12.540 like he's 18 or he's in his mid twenties, it's because his wife is dressing him because for her

00:00:17.900 being able to signal things like youth or maintain fertility or trendiness or relevance,

00:00:24.320 those are, those are good from a female perspective, but from a male perspective,

00:00:28.720 That makes you look like you're denying, like you haven't accomplished anything over the

00:00:32.920 last 20, 30 years.

00:00:34.160 And so you're still trying to hold on to all this untested potential as opposed to, no,

00:00:38.800 I've, I've earned some status and I've made some, I've made some moves and I've, I've

00:00:42.800 attained a certain level of credibility and a certain level of status within my life.

00:00:47.140 And I want to dress in a way that symbolizes that.

00:00:53.380 Welcome to episode 123 of the Michaela Peterson podcast.

00:00:57.000 In this episode, I spoke with men's style coach, author, and TEDx speaker, Tanner Guzzi.

00:01:03.280 It was interesting because I feel the focus on men's fashion has shifted dramatically over the last few decades.

00:01:09.040 And fashion is something every guy should know about and don't.

00:01:12.800 It's so easy to look good, or at least look better, depending on how you dress.

00:01:18.100 And you get treated so differently if you put a bit of effort into your appearance.

00:01:21.860 It can be the difference between getting a job or not, or a relationship or not.

00:01:27.000 or being taken seriously, even if you don't know what you're talking about.

00:01:30.960 It's important, and many men don't know anything about fashion.

00:01:34.640 We covered topics like how personality is expressed through style,

00:01:38.260 choosing suits and shoes, the three archetypes of male fashion,

00:01:43.000 husbands dressing for their wives, men wearing dresses.

00:01:47.060 We also went into a bit of detail about Guzzi's personal life,

00:01:50.100 the joys of parenthood, and his time spent as a missionary

00:01:53.020 for the Church of Latter-day Saints.

00:01:55.300 This was a pretty cool episode.

00:01:56.460 I hope you guys enjoy it and have a good week.

00:02:06.940 Tanner Guzzi, welcome to the podcast.

00:02:09.760 Thanks for having me on, Mikhail.

00:02:10.900 I'm excited to be here.

00:02:12.020 It's nice to see you again.

00:02:14.100 Yeah.

00:02:14.840 This should be a fun conversation.

00:02:16.420 Before we get into it, can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is

00:02:21.660 you do?

00:02:22.960 Yes.

00:02:23.900 So Tanner Guzzi, I am based out of the Salt Lake City-ish area, born and raised here.

00:02:29.840 I am a father of five, and I have one of the weirdest jobs in the world.

00:02:35.460 I'm a men's style coach. 0.95

00:02:36.860 So I teach guys how to dress better and why they should even give a crap about what their

00:02:40.700 clothes are and how they look and how they present themselves with their grooming and

00:02:43.780 all of that too.

00:02:45.320 That's good.

00:02:46.120 I think that's very important.

00:02:47.680 I think that's very important.

00:02:48.820 I guess, I guess we should start off by why does it matter how you look?

00:02:55.940 The biggest thing is because it is a, it's a way to express yourself, not only to the

00:03:00.740 world around you, but also to change your own self-perception when it's done right.

00:03:05.700 It's just as powerful as learning how to, uh, to read and write the, the ability to

00:03:11.220 articulate yourself through your appearance is just as powerful and just as important

00:03:15.000 as it is to do it with the written or the spoken language.

00:03:16.980 i think that's fair i think that's something that's underestimated right now

00:03:22.000 but how much it matters and people care what you look like you're completely judged right away

00:03:27.340 yeah and you should be because we're visual creatures and we can't take in we can't treat

00:03:33.180 people like they're blank slates like everything is completely open and there's no prejudgments or

00:03:39.260 preconceptions now obviously being mature means that you take that initial impression and then

00:03:44.100 you reevaluate it based on new information that you get as you get to know people and you go

00:03:48.380 through that process as well. But our brains would explode if we didn't have initial impressions of

00:03:53.320 people based on how they looked or how they sound or all these other kinds of patterns that we learn

00:03:56.740 how to recognize. Yeah. What does it look like when you get started with a client? Do you go

00:04:00.760 through their wardrobe? Do you suggest certain things based on how they already look? Yeah. I

00:04:06.700 actually don't do a lot of suggestions until we get quite a ways into the program because

00:04:11.000 I need to figure out who they are, how they see themselves fitting within the world and what the

00:04:16.320 ideal version of them looks like, who, how they want to communicate themselves to the people at

00:04:20.940 work or their family or dating prospects or any of those things. And so we go through a pretty

00:04:24.680 detailed process of discovering all that. A lot of it starts with what they have in their wardrobe.

00:04:29.760 And then after we're done with that, then that's when I start making recommendations.

00:04:33.760 But what's really cool is most of the time, I don't need to make that many recommendations

00:04:37.060 because my guys get good enough with this on their own that they're making really good decisions by

00:04:41.320 themselves. So you get people to look at an ideal version of themselves. Yeah. Okay. That makes

00:04:49.220 sense. So are there any style like complete nose? Like how do you feel about bedazzled jeans? Can

00:04:54.860 anyone make this look good? Well, okay. Here's the thing where it gets really interesting. And I guess

00:04:59.280 we can continue to compare it to language or articulation is that you can think about some

00:05:05.340 of those things like bedazzled jeans or Crocs or really baggy cargo shorts or that kind of stuff.

00:05:10.740 And right. And that's almost the equivalent of, of your swear words where there are very few times

00:05:16.720 when it's appropriate to do it, but when it is, it's really appropriate to do it. But most of us

00:05:20.200 overly rely on that kind of language and too many men overly rely on those types of clothes. And so

00:05:25.000 you need to be, yeah, you need to be more specific with how you do it. How do you feel about

00:05:28.920 Birkenstocks? Berks, honestly, man, there are some guys, especially when, when you're in kind

00:05:35.180 of a coastal area. They can be a really cool kind of a beach look, or you can get a little kind of

00:05:39.980 like new England wasp to it or something else. And so I think Berks, when they're done in the

00:05:43.600 right context can end up looking pretty cool. Okay. Okay. What, what kind of person does,

00:05:49.420 does every man need a good suit? What does a good suit look like? How does somebody tell

00:05:53.120 when they're wearing a good suit? Okay. There's a lot of questions in that one.

00:05:57.860 No, not every man needs a good suit anymore, which sucks because suiting used to be something

00:06:02.640 that was kind of ubiquitous. And people really understood that when you were,

00:06:08.280 if you were participating in Western civilization, if you were doing something that you wanted to

00:06:12.360 communicate dignity and respect and self-mastery, any sort of credibility or authority, you would

00:06:17.920 wear a suit. But we've not only moved away from the idea of hierarchies in general, but we've also

00:06:25.180 kind of split from rather being this big kind of homogenous Western culture into being a bunch of

00:06:31.340 smaller tribes and you get different cultures based on the industry that you work in, or based

00:06:35.360 on the music that you listen to, or what your political ideology is, or even, you know, simple

00:06:40.120 things like, are you an Apple or an Android guy and all this other kind of stuff. And so we've

00:06:44.180 moved away from this homogenous culture into something that's a lot more tribe specific.

00:06:49.000 And in so many of those wearing a suit is actually a big sign of being an outside an outsider. And

00:06:55.260 so it makes you, it actually comes with more liability than, than with more advantages to it.

00:06:59.180 wow wow okay wild right yeah i mean you look at movies and videos of things in the 50s and

00:07:08.160 everybody looked i feel like people look better than they look now and there's an aesthetic

00:07:14.140 component that we miss for sure and obviously the suit isn't the only way to do it because you go

00:07:18.540 back 300 years and people looked good and healthy and strong and men looked like men and women looked

00:07:23.520 like women and it wasn't suits like we see it today or you go back to you know ancient aztec

00:07:28.160 culture or the romans or uh you know the aborigines or anybody else and we've always used

00:07:33.700 clothing and there's always been an aesthetic component to it and sadly for so many of the

00:07:38.600 these micro tribes that we're in we're kind of caught up in this post-modernism where we reject

00:07:44.720 beauty we reject aesthetics and in order to be able to signal that you're part of the group that 0.96

00:07:50.220 you understand the language you have to embrace the level of ugliness and it sucks yeah do you

00:07:57.500 think that's because people i've been torn about this i assume that's because the general population

00:08:03.240 has gotten more unhealthy so just we've gotten uglier as a whole so it's like why not embrace it

00:08:09.520 like potentially the fat acceptance movement is because people can't figure out how to lose weight

00:08:13.660 they don't understand that what they eat matters can't lose weight so why not make it an acceptance

00:08:19.320 movement movement if you can't figure out how to change it yeah i i agree with that and it's not

00:08:25.020 even, I don't even think acceptance is, is correct with how far it's gotten. They call it fat

00:08:29.840 acceptance, but it's really this, like, we're going to reject beauty. We're going to reject

00:08:34.500 goodness. We're going to reject health so that you don't reject us. It's almost like, um, like

00:08:39.680 the, the Aesop's, uh, sour grapes fables of, you know, I just don't want those lower or those

00:08:44.000 higher grapes because they're probably sour anyway, where it's Eminem in eight mile, you know,

00:08:48.420 rapping about all of his weaknesses so that in that rap battle, the guy can't actually get

00:08:52.580 anything else on him it's this complete rejection of of these traditional standards and if you if

00:08:58.740 i reject you first you can't reject me you know you can't fire me i quit type of thing oh that

00:09:04.400 could be it yeah they shut down didn't they shut down victoria's secrets this year victoria's

00:09:09.700 the runway show did you hear about that yeah yeah and they started doing again you've got all this

00:09:14.780 uh these kind of like anti-beauty beauty standards where it's all about we're embracing all people

00:09:21.000 at all size and all. And I get it. I mean, body acceptance is wonderful. When you look at things

00:09:25.960 like you look at people who come back from war and they're missing limbs or burn victims or other

00:09:32.000 things that really are, it's out of your control. You're born a certain way. And, and that, and

00:09:36.220 honestly, even if you are, if you're, if you're fat and you can't control it, it doesn't mean you

00:09:39.680 don't have any value as a person, but you're missing out on not only communicating your full

00:09:45.240 value, but experiencing your full value. If you don't try and make yourself healthy and also

00:09:50.900 in some way aesthetically valid. If you don't try and make yourself beautiful as a woman or

00:09:55.240 handsome as a man, you miss out on what your full potential is. Yes. People react to you

00:10:01.200 differently too. Like even when, when I got healthy and I lost weight, people reacted to

00:10:05.500 me differently dramatically, or I have blonde hair right now. My hair is not naturally blonde.

00:10:10.300 I get a completely different reaction being blonde. Right? Yeah. And you're the same person,

00:10:15.280 but do you also see yourself differently? Does your self-perception change a little bit when

00:10:19.640 you see yourself in the mirror compared to before you were blonde or when you were bigger?

00:10:23.460 Oh, definitely. 0.94

00:10:25.480 Right.

00:10:26.060 Yeah.

00:10:26.440 It's huge.

00:10:27.160 Yeah.

00:10:27.480 It's huge.

00:10:29.260 Okay.

00:10:30.120 What tips do you have for people if they want to get started?

00:10:33.000 So say, say that they've been focused on work or family and I wouldn't want, I don't want

00:10:39.640 to say like, let things go, but just haven't prioritized how they look.

00:10:42.420 How do you suggest people get started or make it a higher priority?

00:10:45.700 I would say the first thing to do for most men is go through your closet and throw out anything

00:10:52.800 that has any sort of a graphic print on it, because you should not be basing your identity

00:10:57.840 based on whatever product it is that you consume, or you should not be looking so apathetic that

00:11:02.900 you're still wearing the t-shirt that your company hosted a 5k and you just got the t-shirt for free

00:11:08.260 when you showed up to work that day. Like you should be projecting yourself as more than that.

00:11:12.480 And so get rid of anything that has any graphics on it.

00:11:14.920 And then from there, start to focus on, pay attention to people around you, pay attention

00:11:19.640 to those that look like they are, that they're credible, that they're successful, that they're

00:11:24.900 happy, that they're authoritative, that they're dignified, whatever the virtues are, that

00:11:28.740 are the things that you want to emulate, pay attention to the people around you and look

00:11:32.200 at people who look like they express those things and then start to emulate what those

00:11:36.620 styles are, especially because it's different.

00:11:38.780 It's different in Toronto than it is in Salt Lake, which is different than Nashville.

00:11:41.700 and it's different if you work in tech versus if you're in a blue collar industry. And so

00:11:45.340 there's not any specific, like just this one technical thing you can do, just like you can't

00:11:51.140 say, you know, learn how to use these words. If you speak French or if you speak English or you

00:11:56.600 speak German, because the words all mean something different. And so you have to focus on what's the

00:12:00.820 meaning you want to convey and how are the people in your world conveying that same meaning and

00:12:05.640 start to emulate it from there. Does that make sense? That does make sense. That does make sense.

00:12:10.660 yeah look at what you're trying to convey look at people who are doing what you're trying to convey

00:12:15.380 yeah yeah that's smart okay hair do you have hair tip styles or does that completely differ

00:12:23.400 for people as well facial hair a little bit what's in right now right there's a lot of man

00:12:28.240 oh well and again right no you're good i love that question because it comes down to again like we

00:12:34.000 don't have this this kind of homogenous culture it's the same thing with like what are the trends

00:12:38.280 that are coming down the pike and i don't know it depends are you do you are you into sports and

00:12:42.300 what kind of sports are you into are you in this industry or that industry but hair is different

00:12:46.260 because hair and and beards are different because you actually have limitations if you don't have

00:12:51.460 a good set a good head of hair if you're starting to really lose it honestly just shave it and

00:12:56.820 embrace the bald look there aren't very many masculine ways to have a receding hairline that

00:13:01.600 looks good on you same thing if you've got a patchy beard that come that doesn't come in great

00:13:05.240 sorry with the way most of the world is right now you can't do a goatee without looking like

00:13:10.180 you're holding on to the 90s and so you're better off either doing clean shaven or doing a full

00:13:14.600 thing but a lot of it is going to be dependent on on what your actual genetics and what your

00:13:20.220 health markers are but what a lot of guys really should be doing is using their grooming their hair

00:13:26.800 their beard even their physique or their posture their body language yeah as a way to kind of

00:13:32.740 counter signal a lot of what they're doing with their clothing. Cause what most men do is they

00:13:36.960 get really one dimensional with their appearance. It's I'm, I'm, you know, you go back to the high

00:13:41.300 school stereotypes of I'm a jock. And so everything about me looks like the jock or I'm a nerd. And

00:13:45.520 so everything about me looks like a nerd and a fully established adult man should be multi-dimensional.

00:13:51.760 And so you should be able to look really clean in a suit, but maybe you've got a beard and long

00:13:56.940 hair. And so it's like, Oh, this is a little bit more interesting because he isn't so perfectly

00:14:00.460 polished or maybe you've got you know a really big build because you're strong and you've taken

00:14:05.440 good care of yourself in the gym and and so you dress in a way that's a little bit more friendly

00:14:09.780 and inviting instead of intimidating or you have some fat and some weight to lose and so you dress

00:14:14.300 in a way that counter signals that yes i still am disciplined and i'm dignified and i still pay

00:14:18.800 attention to the details even if my physique isn't exactly where i want it to be either but create

00:14:23.300 some multi-dimensionality between all of these aspects of how you present yourself to people

00:14:28.980 When you're trying to give people style advice, do you also work on physique and diet and

00:14:33.960 lifestyle?

00:14:35.600 I usually partner up with other coaches to kind of point them towards that.

00:14:39.000 And a lot of times, most of my clients are guys who come in and they're already halfway

00:14:42.960 through that journey.

00:14:43.840 They see the value of it.

00:14:45.320 And that's when they decide they want to start working on the clothing aspect of it too.

00:14:49.160 Okay.

00:14:50.000 But yeah, it's a huge aspect.

00:14:51.380 Honestly, the biggest thing that you can do to improve your appearance has nothing to

00:14:54.460 do with clothes.

00:14:55.060 It's getting better shape.

00:14:56.560 That that's the biggest thing you could do.

00:14:58.300 yeah you see people at fashion shows and they're wearing curtains right like it just looks terrible

00:15:03.640 and you're like oh no that was unique stylish like no that person was hot yeah yeah exactly

00:15:10.760 yeah do you find that men are dressing less masculine and are we just headed continually

00:15:17.060 heading in that direction because i've seen like people are showing up in dresses now i'm not sure

00:15:22.180 how i feel about that i don't think i feel good about it i'm open though like do whatever but i

00:15:27.400 don't find it attractive but like what's going on there yeah i think we're seeing two different

00:15:32.340 movements you're seeing this move towards androgyny and that's where you get a lot of the

00:15:36.420 dresses you get a lot of the high fashion you get a lot of kind of the urbanites and it's almost a

00:15:40.680 long kind of political or ideological lines where this idea of androgyny and men or women are

00:15:45.260 interchangeable and there's not there not that many differences and then at the same time on

00:15:49.360 the other hand you get this kind of like anti-aesthetic aesthetic of you're going to have

00:15:54.240 to pry my cargo shorts and my eighties metal t-shirt and my combat boots out of my cold dead

00:15:59.060 hands. Cause there's no way I'm ever going to wear anything besides that. Oh yeah. Neither,

00:16:04.600 neither of those are ideal. Exactly. And both of them become kind of caricatures of, of what they

00:16:11.980 really could be or should be. And we've rejected the idea of there being a deliberate and intentional

00:16:18.320 and at the same time, masculine way to dress because we either reject masculinity and embrace

00:16:23.800 fashion or embrace trends or embrace androgyny, or we reject aesthetics and embrace masculinity,

00:16:29.380 but we treat both of these as if they're mutually exclusive and they're not.

00:16:33.820 How did you get started doing this?

00:16:37.520 Man, I, so the early, the early story of it is I went to a private school when I was

00:16:44.300 seventh, eighth grade, sixth grade, stuff like that, had to wear the gray dress slacks,

00:16:49.760 the white shirt, the rep stripe tie, the Navy blazer, the whole thing.

00:16:52.640 I was really, really, this was like mid nineties. I was really big into punk rock and BMX bikes and

00:17:00.080 snowboards and all of that. And so I wanted green Liberty spikes and I wanted battle jackets,

00:17:05.380 right? Like just the complete opposite as far as an aesthetic. And especially you go back to

00:17:11.220 like the nineties gutter punk and it was very in your face. And I couldn't wear that when I was in

00:17:16.720 school or my friends that were my friends that I would ride bikes with would see me come home from

00:17:20.720 school and they would make fun of me because I was wearing my private school clothes. And so I

00:17:24.280 learned from experience pretty early on how much appearance has to do with identity and how much

00:17:30.760 it has to do with shaping your own sense of who you are and also how people perceive you. And then

00:17:36.140 that was something that was kind of in my pocket for a long time. I dealt with it when I was

00:17:39.720 serving as a missionary for my church in Toronto, actually. So kind of in your home, your hometown

00:17:44.240 and had to wear a suit and a tie all the time and the way people perceive me there. And so

00:17:48.880 about 10 years ago, I realized that I was interested in it. I wanted to write about

00:17:53.440 something. I was sick about writing about politics or anything. And so I started a little blog called

00:17:57.300 Masculine Style and it's picked up momentum. And here we are 10 years later and I get to do this

00:18:02.440 full time. That's very cool. Okay. Can we talk about missionary work? Yeah, absolutely.

00:18:09.100 Okay. So give me a background on that. We'll take this conversation in a slightly different

00:18:14.280 direction. What brought you to Toronto and what were, what were you doing exactly?

00:18:17.720 Yeah. So I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what we do is for young men, you have a commitment where you go out and you serve a full-time mission for two years. I'm sure you've seen the guys with like the black name tags on their chest and they're wearing the white shirts and the suits and all that. Yep. So you go do that for two years. When I went, you went when you were 19. Now they have guys go a little bit younger, but you don't get to pick where you go, nor do you get to pick the language that you speak.

00:18:44.440 you just open up an envelope that says, this is where you're going. And when you leave,

00:18:48.220 and when you come back and here's the language you're speaking. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That's intense.

00:18:52.500 Toronto. Okay. That's pretty good then. That could have been weird.

00:18:56.540 Right. Well, and I have, you know, I have one of my brothers served in the Czech Republic.

00:19:00.340 Another one was supposed to serve in Haiti, but because of the unrest there, he ended up going to

00:19:04.240 Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I have cousins that. Haiti or Fort Lauderdale. Okay. Exactly. Right.

00:19:09.400 But I mean, I've had cousins that have served in like the sticks of Panama or people that have been

00:19:13.400 And then Russia, like you really can go kind of anywhere, almost to the point where I remember

00:19:17.720 being a little bit disappointed that I was going to Canada because all of your friends

00:19:21.840 go to all these exotic places and they get to do it in a whole different way.

00:19:25.680 But I had to speak Spanish, which helped. 0.52

00:19:28.340 It helped kind of make it feel a little bit different.

00:19:30.680 And I fell in love with the city and I fell in love with being able to learn how to express

00:19:35.860 myself in Spanish.

00:19:36.880 And it was a hard two years for sure.

00:19:39.380 I mean, you're doing it full time.

00:19:42.100 You're not dating.

00:19:42.620 you're not going, not going to school. You're not working. Uh, when I was out, I got two phone

00:19:47.300 calls a year with my family. I call them on Christmas and on mother's day. And other than

00:19:50.940 that, it was emails once a week and you were in the trenches. Like it's, it's a full on monk mode,

00:19:55.860 right? A passage. And you're talking to people about religion and you're trying to help them

00:19:59.800 see what religion is and what a relationship with God and Christ can be. And to hopefully join the,

00:20:05.940 join the church. And it's, it's intense. Yeah. And I feel like people in Toronto also aren't

00:20:10.480 particularly religious. Yeah, we dealt with, I couldn't tell most of the time if people hated

00:20:15.660 me more for being a Latter-day Saint or for being an American, but we dealt with a lot of resentment

00:20:21.100 from a lot of people. Wow. At 19, that's pretty, that's interesting. That's interesting. It's so

00:20:28.060 good for you. I can't wait for my son to go do it. It's just, it's so good for you because you learn

00:20:32.600 how you learn how to do hard things. You learn how to deal with social pressure and apprehension,

00:20:37.100 You learn how to deal with discipline.

00:20:38.420 You learn how to deal with that.

00:20:40.080 It's so good for you in so many ways.

00:20:42.100 It's gotta be scary.

00:20:43.100 You learn how to deal with people

00:20:44.640 who don't want to talk to you.

00:20:46.040 That's scary.

00:20:46.840 Oh yeah.

00:20:47.400 I mean, imagine going and sitting down

00:20:48.940 by somebody on the bus

00:20:50.180 and you know they don't want to talk to you

00:20:51.560 because they recognize the name tag

00:20:52.780 and they know what you're all about.

00:20:54.000 And then trying to speak to them in Spanish

00:20:56.420 or some language that you started learning five weeks ago.

00:20:59.380 It's terrifying.

00:21:00.340 And it's so good for you because it's so terrifying.

00:21:03.960 Oh, wow.

00:21:05.100 That's intense.

00:21:06.000 Yeah.

00:21:06.560 Okay.

00:21:07.100 Well, that makes sense.

00:21:08.340 And you said they do it earlier now.

00:21:09.680 How do you make money?

00:21:10.480 Yeah, they said you get like an amount of money

00:21:12.440 you get a year or something to survive.

00:21:13.980 You actually, you pay to do it.

00:21:16.480 What?

00:21:17.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:18.880 Wow.

00:21:20.540 Yeah.

00:21:20.920 Okay, well, now I know.

00:21:24.180 Okay, do you talk about style archetypes at all?

00:21:29.120 I do, yeah.

00:21:30.000 In fact, I have three that I break it down to.

00:21:32.060 You wanna go through those?

00:21:32.700 Let's get into those, yeah.

00:21:34.060 Okay, this is really good

00:21:35.120 because the archetypes really help people

00:21:36.720 to understand. I think one of the big mistakes that, that we currently make is that we see style

00:21:42.880 as something that creative people, whether that's designers or the people at magazines or influence

00:21:48.720 or something else that they create. And then we adopt and, you know, it's kind of like the fight

00:21:54.080 club, like you're not your khakis type of thing. But what style really is, is you start with who

00:21:58.500 you are on the inside and then you express that externally through your clothing. So it starts

00:22:03.260 inside and moves out as opposed to starting outside and moving in. And in order to do that

00:22:07.380 correctly, you have to identify where you fall within these particular archetypes. And I work

00:22:12.040 with three of them. So you've got rugged, refined, and rakish really easy to remember the three R's 1.00

00:22:17.180 and what this is, is how you interact with the world around you. So the guys who are primarily

00:22:22.360 rugged, they interact with the world through physical means. And it may be kind of the

00:22:26.840 stereotypical association of like the lumberjack or the blue collar worker or the cowboy,

00:22:31.420 where it may be somebody who's more just like a musician or a triathlete or somebody that still

00:22:36.180 engages in the world physically and they're happiest when they're doing things physically

00:22:39.540 and so you start to dress in a way that expresses that the refined guys are guys who understand

00:22:46.160 systems and hierarchies and social pecking orders and all of that and they thrive by being able to

00:22:53.320 play by the rules climb the ladder get on the good side of the boss network the right way and they're

00:22:57.740 they're really good at understanding and following the rules and that's how they can kind of thrive 0.98

00:23:00.940 within society and you dress in a way that reflects that as well and then the rakish guys

00:23:05.700 they understand that hierarchy just as well as the refined guys but they thrive by going against it

00:23:11.900 by throwing a big middle finger to it and rejecting it and so they dress in a way that reflects that

00:23:17.320 as well and it's fun as you start to see these different archetypes and everybody has all three

00:23:22.300 of them but you also get them in different ratios you know most guys will be primarily one or even

00:23:27.820 two more so than all three but as you start to dress in a way that reflects those in the proper

00:23:32.140 ratios you feel incredibly congruent and authentic in what your style is because it feels like you

00:23:38.220 know when you see yourself in the mirror what you see actually looks like how you feel as opposed

00:23:43.020 to there being this dissonance between the two of them yeah yeah i feel that okay yeah one one

00:23:49.360 comment when i got healthy that's how i felt i can remember looking right yeah i can remember

00:23:53.140 looking in the mirror before i got really sick and being like well i look better than i feel

00:23:57.940 and then it started to like even the playing field i was like oh no i'm looking kind of how i feel

00:24:03.780 uh and then yeah things things weren't so good okay this rakish style so how do you go how do

00:24:11.600 you go against what other people are doing and still end up stylish what's an example

00:24:16.100 it depends on what your tribe is because you know if you live in the suburbs of utah

00:24:22.340 and most of the guys around me in my neighborhood they work in the tech industry so they're wearing

00:24:27.220 just kind of plain t-shirts and they're they've got shortly cropped hair and they're wearing

00:24:32.040 simple skinny jeans and and t-shirts or and sneakers even for me just having longer hair

00:24:37.180 and having a fuller beard and looking like i pay more attention to my style looks more rakish you

00:24:42.300 get into urban environments and you get a lot of like street wear and the sneaker heads and that

00:24:46.260 kind of stuff. And that's incredibly rakish. You can go into more of a rock and roll type style

00:24:51.340 that you would see depending on the decade, whether it's like the Beatles were rakish because

00:24:55.880 of the way that they dress, you certainly can get into punk rock or metal or a lot of the stuff that

00:24:59.920 guys will wear when they're doing music videos or they're on stage and that's rakish. And honestly,

00:25:04.120 even if it were something as simple as everybody in your office wore a white shirt and you showed

00:25:08.600 up to work wearing a blue one, that's rakish in and of itself too. So it has a lot more to do with

00:25:13.200 a comparison to the people around you than there being any objective standard of what rakishness

00:25:19.500 is. Okay. Say you're, that makes sense. Say you're trying to hide a part of you, like make

00:25:25.480 one area bigger, one area smaller, or you're bigger than you want to be. And you want to be

00:25:29.680 slimmer. Let's, let's start with that one. If you're bigger than you want to be, and you want

00:25:33.720 to appear slimmer, what are the, what style advice do you have for those guys?

00:25:38.600 We're talking about hiding yourself and all of that, just like from a fear, a pure physical

00:25:42.300 component.

00:25:42.880 Not like my presence is bigger, but my body is bigger and I want to, yeah, physical, just

00:25:46.940 physical.

00:25:47.980 Gotcha.

00:25:48.500 Okay.

00:25:49.160 A couple of easy ways to do that. 1.00

00:25:50.760 And a lot of this, I'm sure, you know, because the, the same rules kind of apply to women, 1.00

00:25:54.020 you are solids and dark colors. 1.00

00:25:55.700 You have minimal transition between what you look like on top and what you look like on

00:26:00.060 the bottom.

00:26:00.420 So if you're doing a more monochromatic look, that helps vertical stripes can do a lot of

00:26:04.920 good where it draws people's eyes in and draws them up so that they can kind of slim you out

00:26:09.600 there. And then for a lot of men, especially because most of us, when we're bigger than we

00:26:14.720 want to be, we tend to carry more weights in our stomachs and in our love handles and kind of right

00:26:19.120 there through the midsection. And so what you want to do is you want to find shirts that they fit

00:26:23.660 nice and snug in the chest and the traps, the shoulders and the upper arms. So it almost looks

00:26:28.680 like you're so jacked that you're kind of nice and snug through there, but then it's a little bit

00:26:33.400 looser with a little bit more drape down through the waist and through the seat, kind of in that

00:26:37.240 midsection area, because one, it hides that. And then two, it also draws all this visible attention

00:26:42.740 to your shoulders and your upper body instead. And so it artificially creates that V shape that

00:26:47.980 that's the most masculine aesthetic and that most of us are after. Okay. That's good. How do you

00:26:53.200 feel about square toed shoes? I'm so glad that trend is dead. That one is so bad. There's,

00:27:01.580 there's nothing aesthetic about it they were just ugly and they were a trend at a certain

00:27:05.400 oh i'm so glad they're gone okay that's kind of how i feel that's one of those like one of the

00:27:13.740 few four-letter words in the aesthetic world that that's yeah you just don't ever say you don't ever

00:27:17.700 say four square-toed shoes you there's there's no excuse that makes those work i mean yeah maybe

00:27:22.720 you go back 25 years ago and and they would have worked then because that was what was expected but

00:27:28.400 They're terrible. If you own them, get rid of them today. Okay. I'm glad, I'm glad you brought

00:27:34.420 that up. So Crocs, how do you feel about those sandals that are super strappy? Those have got

00:27:39.620 to go to, right? The ones that have a whole bunch of straps. Just, I feel like they're called, I just

00:27:44.020 know them because my dad used to wear them all the time. Like the hirachas? Oh no. I feel like

00:27:49.480 I went into an area that you like. I don't know what a hiracha is. What's a hiracha? They're kind

00:27:54.280 of like they're made i think they're made in southern mexico um or like uh central america

00:28:00.600 upper south america but they've got a bunch of different straps all over them and those if you're

00:28:05.560 in the right environment kind of like birkenstocks can end up being really cool but they're tough to

00:28:10.760 pull off in the right way i gotta i gotta find photos of what your dad used to wear so that i

00:28:14.580 can i can tell him if he's doing a good job with them or not they were pretty bad i think they were

00:28:18.080 closed toed, but they just had a lot of straps anyway. Uh, you, so you'd put the strappy sandals

00:28:24.840 in the same category as Birkenstocks. No, the, the hirachas, same thing with like espadrilles.

00:28:30.720 Do you remember Tom's when those were really big 10 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Those are an espadrille

00:28:35.020 and those have like a classic Spanish origin where it's almost like a slipper with the rope

00:28:39.160 sole. And if you're in a coastal area and it's summer, you can do those and do them really well.

00:28:44.900 You know, if you're, if you're in Florida or you're in Spain or Ibiza, or, you know,

00:28:49.440 like you've got a lot of different options that you can do stuff like that.

00:28:51.940 And those Birkenstocks, Harachas, espadrilles way better than most flip-flops.

00:28:58.920 Okay.

00:28:59.680 That's fair.

00:29:00.620 That's fair.

00:29:01.860 What recommendations do you have for people who are, I know, I know this is going to differ

00:29:07.400 depending on where the person's located, but if you're trying to impress somebody on a date

00:29:11.820 and exude confidence? What kind of outfit goes with that?

00:29:17.220 So the biggest thing that I would say is wear something, obviously it needs to be,

00:29:22.360 you know, context appropriate for what it is that you're doing on the date and where you live time

00:29:26.560 of year and all of that. But the biggest thing that I would say is wear something that makes

00:29:32.000 you feel like you're on fire, makes you feel like you're the best version of yourself. Sadly,

00:29:37.040 what a lot of men do is when they're getting ready to go out on a date, they put on something that

00:29:41.140 part of their brain goes, this looks good and I should feel good in it. But then the other part

00:29:45.840 feels really self-conscious. Am I trying too hard? Does this not fit right? Is, am I, you know,

00:29:50.780 is this too ostentatious? Am I, am I calling for too much attention? And so they have this

00:29:56.780 internal battle that's happening subconsciously the whole time and remove that. Don't wear

00:30:02.560 something that a date is the wrong time to experiment with something new. You should

00:30:06.220 already be really comfortable in what you're wearing so that it almost feels like you're

00:30:09.680 putting on a social version or an aesthetic version of what your battle armor is so that

00:30:14.940 you can go in and you can be totally mentally and emotionally freed up to focus on what you're

00:30:20.420 doing on the date, as opposed to that nagging in the back of your head the whole time that

00:30:23.760 you're out there. Okay. That makes sense. Uh, have you seen what kind of different style can

00:30:29.480 make to somebody's love life? Like, have you seen somebody without like losing weight, say

00:30:35.580 with just changing how they dress? Have you seen what difference that can make?

00:30:39.680 It's massive, especially for, for married men. I mean, it's huge for guys that are in the dating

00:30:45.180 market. A lot of my clients are kind of young guys that work in the tech space and for them

00:30:49.380 to not only see themselves as now multidimensional, but actually carry themselves with some level of

00:30:54.440 confidence. It makes dating so much easier, but especially for men that are married and they've

00:30:58.840 been in a relationship for a long time because your wife doesn't want to dress you. She doesn't 0.89

00:31:04.940 want to see you as another one of the kids that she has to now think about this. And she has to

00:31:09.260 choose your clothes. I mean, it's so emasculating and it kills the respect that she can have for 0.95

00:31:13.740 you. She wants you to look good. And that's why she chooses to dress you because dressing you

00:31:18.200 is better than you looking like garbage. But what's even better is if you can dress yourself 0.99

00:31:22.480 in a way that looks attractive and it looks dignified and it looks self-respecting. And she

00:31:27.840 knows that who she knows on the inside, this person that she's in love with this person that

00:31:32.140 she spent all these years with, that that's what she sees when she sees, you know, she posts you

00:31:36.680 up on social media, or that's what she sees when you guys go do family photos for that

00:31:40.800 year or whatever it is that you kind of get these versions of it, that she's proud to

00:31:43.920 have you to be on your arm when you go out on a date or when you go out, you know, with

00:31:47.960 friends in the neighborhood, or you go grab drinks and she's not embarrassed that you're

00:31:51.040 saying it changes her whole perception of you, your respectability, your own sense of

00:31:55.760 self.

00:31:56.100 And it it's, it's massive.

00:31:57.640 Okay.

00:31:58.000 That was good.

00:31:58.740 So no square toed shoes.

00:32:00.680 No square toed.

00:32:01.700 We'll just go back to that.

00:32:03.000 Yeah.

00:32:03.180 I think that that's, that's really important because I have friends too, that will help

00:32:09.260 their significant other to dress, but it's entirely because they're like, you cannot

00:32:14.260 wear that.

00:32:14.940 You cannot wear that and be seen with me wear this instead, but that's a pretty low bar.

00:32:20.660 You're like aiming for something a bit higher up.

00:32:23.800 Exactly. 0.99

00:32:24.480 Well, and a big part of it too, is that women and men have different aesthetic goals. 0.92

00:32:28.900 when we get dressed. The things that you want to convey with your clothing and with your style

00:32:33.740 are very different than the things that I want to convey. And it becomes really easy to see,

00:32:38.360 especially older men. If you ever see an older guy that's in like his fifties and he looks like

00:32:42.260 he's trying to dress like he's 18 or he's in his mid twenties, it's because his wife is dressing

00:32:47.120 him because for her being able to signal things like youth or maintain fertility or trendiness

00:32:54.280 or relevance. Those are, those are good from a female perspective, but from a male perspective, 0.96

00:32:59.360 that makes you look like you're denying, like you haven't accomplished anything over the last 20,

00:33:04.280 30 years. And so you're still trying to hold onto all this untested potential as opposed to, no,

00:33:09.440 I've, I've earned some status and I've made some, I've made some moves and I've, I've attained a

00:33:13.980 certain level of credibility and a certain level of status within my life. And I want to dress in

00:33:18.920 a way that symbolizes that. And so that's one of the biggest differences in the way that men and

00:33:22.720 women dress and another reason why you shouldn't let most women dress you oh that's really good 1.00

00:33:28.260 advice do you think there's a way for people who are younger so say you're younger at a job 1.00

00:33:33.100 is there a benefit in dressing like some of the older people

00:33:35.880 only if you've earned some level of status uh this is why you can get i'm going to pick on

00:33:43.480 these guys because it's so obvious but you get like the college republicans that they dress up

00:33:48.240 in their suits and they just look they just look so dorky in the way that they do it and it's because

00:33:52.300 there's this disparity between how young and untested, how they don't have any credibility.

00:33:58.500 They don't have any experience. They don't have any mastery, but the suit still, because we as

00:34:03.460 a culture are not so far removed that it doesn't have any symbolism to us, to us, it still represents

00:34:08.240 that. And so it's, it's basically, I'm relying on my clothing to signal something that I, that

00:34:14.180 isn't actually consistent with who I am. And so the easiest way for young guys to be able to

00:34:19.740 dress well in a work environment is to not dress up more formally or to not emulate the guys that

00:34:25.580 are at the absolute like top of the echelon, but dress like everybody else that's in your same kind

00:34:29.940 of tier, but make sure your stuff fits better. Focus on simpler colors and make sure that you

00:34:35.500 buy higher quality versions of it. Because even though people won't be able to quantify the

00:34:38.980 difference between like a $20 shirt that you picked up at a department store and a hundred

00:34:43.260 dollar custom shirt, you, they will see the difference, even if they can't pinpoint what it

00:34:48.040 is. And you will, you will be seen as somebody who still is young and understands his position,

00:34:52.660 but has potential and is, and is doing more than everybody else around him. And so it becomes this

00:34:57.820 very subtle way of communicating that to the, to the people at work. Ah, okay. So be more subtle.

00:35:03.540 High quality. Okay. That's good advice. How much do people, how do you do this on a lower budget?

00:35:10.320 How do you look good on a lower budget? Um, the biggest thing is it's still possible,

00:35:16.040 but you just have to focus on keeping things simple and keeping things that fit well fit well

00:35:21.860 while still sending the right signals depending on where you are and what you do a lot of guys

00:35:26.360 okay one of the biggest mistakes that beginners make when they start trying to dress better is

00:35:31.860 they associate dressing better with dressing more formally so you know if everybody at work is in

00:35:36.100 jeans and a t-shirt then i'm going to show up in slacks and a button-up shirt you don't dress more

00:35:39.860 formally you stay at the same level of formality as everybody else they focus a lot on color where

00:35:44.840 it's I have to have all this new color to be able to bring in because then I stand out and I look

00:35:48.520 different or they focus on pattern which is you know I the number of guys who I know that resent

00:35:54.960 the idea of wearing just like a plain white or a plain blue shirt to work whether that's a t-shirt

00:36:00.220 or a polo or a button shirt they hate it because then that feels so conformist it feels so small

00:36:06.400 and so they end up wearing a pattern shirt and they don't ever pay attention and look around

00:36:10.660 them and realize that everybody else is also wearing pattern shirts because they're trying

00:36:14.340 to stand out and so ignore ignore formality ignore color ignore pattern focus on fit focus on quality

00:36:22.360 to the best that you can afford and then focus on simplicity because you want your clothing to be

00:36:27.560 you want it to be the frame of the painting and you're the painting itself you're you're what

00:36:33.320 people are paying attention to whereas too many guys become the mannequin for the clothing and

00:36:37.620 they're all about showcasing the clothes instead of it going the right way okay what are your

00:36:42.900 favorite uh for lack of a better term lower end cheaper clothing brands okay so here in the states

00:36:51.740 um honestly you can do pretty well even if you go shop at somewhere like target they're good

00:36:57.360 fellow and co uh they're like kind of house line they do a pretty good job as far as fits and

00:37:02.600 keeping things simple and keeping things relevant without either being too trendy or too uh too

00:37:07.660 outdated they do a good job um if you're younger then you can have some luck at h&m but it's really

00:37:13.460 hard to avoid all the kind of crazy out there uh egregious stuff and then same thing with places

00:37:18.400 like zara where avoid like the hyper skinny fits or the really ostentatious stuff but you can find

00:37:24.460 you can find good looking stuff at those places and do it for relatively cheap now i'm also uh like

00:37:30.000 take advantage of outlets go to the j crew outlet go to banana republic outlet go to go to the polo

00:37:36.200 outlet and you can do really well on a pretty good budget with brands like that too. Okay.

00:37:42.300 What about shoes? Shoes, you can't do it cheap and do it well. You got to invest in it. It's

00:37:48.420 worth it because not only is it good from an aesthetic perspective because cheap shoes look

00:37:52.560 cheap and it's really apparent to anybody who knows what they're paying attention to,

00:37:55.720 but it's terrible from a health perspective. You're going to kill your posture. You're going

00:38:00.540 to kill the way your arches are. Your feet are going to get too cramped and that can start to

00:38:05.000 lead to, you know, ankle issues or knee issues or back problems or anything else. And so shoes are

00:38:10.380 one of those things that it's not worth going cheap on invest that the main vest and the best

00:38:14.360 you can afford with those go cheaper on pants and shirts. If that means buying higher quality

00:38:18.460 shoes. Okay. What about accessories? Man accessories. Okay. Totally different with men

00:38:25.240 because with women, you can buy accessories purely for the sake of aesthetics. Does it look good? 1.00

00:38:31.140 does it make me look beautiful does it make me look does it make me look better for men we don't

00:38:34.860 have that way of doing it accessories have to have some sort of meaning to them you can't just

00:38:40.180 like pick them up on the impulse aisle as you're getting ready to check out the checkout of the

00:38:44.740 store it has to have some sort of meaning or symbolism to it okay does that make sense yeah

00:38:50.060 it does so it has to have a use right well well not necessarily like a like a functional use

00:38:54.840 but it can be something like um you know maybe you get yourself uh maybe yourself a good watch

00:39:00.700 or a particular bracelet or a necklace or something else to commemorate a big milestone.

00:39:05.380 You know, I'm about to hit five years of being self-employed.

00:39:08.280 And so I'm looking at good Rolexes for me to be able to kind of have that as something

00:39:11.260 that I can celebrate that way.

00:39:13.800 So if it commemorates something that you've done, if it's something that you picked up

00:39:17.580 on travel, that's a, that's a really good reason to have an accessory where, you know,

00:39:21.380 it's kind of telling a story that, Hey, I picked this up while I was surfing in Costa

00:39:25.240 Rica, or I did this as part of, you know, a trip to the Mediterranean or whatever else.

00:39:29.440 if there's a story that's associated with it um if there's some sort of family history to it

00:39:34.600 where you know these are the cufflinks that my grandpa wore at his wedding and i got them at

00:39:38.320 my wedding and i can wear them now or if you inject some sort of symbolism to it like i've

00:39:43.160 got a big signet ring that has a lot of religious significance to it and so anything that has some

00:39:47.340 sort of like religious or philosophical symbolism um that when you see it reminds you of something

00:39:53.120 then you can get away with wearing accessories that way so it has to have some sort of either

00:39:57.700 physical, social, or psychological purpose in order to pull off something like a bracelet,

00:40:02.960 a necklace, a ring, or something else. Okay. So seashell necklaces.

00:40:09.360 Welcome back to the 1998. Yes. I mean, again, if you're, you know, if you're doing a surf tour,

00:40:18.680 surf tour down in Jamaica, and you happen to be living there for the next eight weeks or eight

00:40:23.320 months, because you're a digital nomad, by all means, embrace it, make it part of your style.

00:40:27.080 when you go back to wherever it is that you are,

00:40:28.780 but don't just pick them up

00:40:30.220 because that's what you see on somebody's Instagram feed

00:40:33.460 and you think it looks cool.

00:40:34.460 It has to have more meaning to it than that for you.

00:40:36.380 Okay, got it.

00:40:37.520 What about favorite high-end brands?

00:40:39.800 What are the best of the best?

00:40:41.000 And which ones are expensive, but no good?

00:40:44.640 Okay, so for the most part,

00:40:46.300 expensive but no good is really the couture brands

00:40:48.600 where you're buying status

00:40:52.860 without it really coming in as far as quality.

00:40:55.460 So stuff like Gucci or Louis Vuitton or any of this Hermes, this stuff.

00:41:00.740 And I mean, a lot of it, sure, it can be decent from a quality perspective.

00:41:03.300 But again, what you're doing is you are, you're swapping your identity from being something

00:41:08.280 that's self-created and self-made into my identity is based on my consumption of this

00:41:13.740 particular product that you have to see my Gucci belts or my mule loafers, or you have

00:41:19.260 to see, you know, my Tom Ford sunglasses.

00:41:21.860 this. And that's, that's how, you know, that I'm a worthwhile person is because

00:41:25.200 I'm attaching myself to this particular brand. And so you want more subtlety in the luxury that

00:41:29.860 you're buying. And so that's going to be right. And I mean, again, if you're getting rakish with

00:41:37.400 some stuff, there's ways to do it. Right. There are ways to be able to play it. Right. But for

00:41:41.820 most guys, they overly rely on this where it's just, they don't have anything else going for

00:41:47.740 them. And so they, they try to create an identity based on this, the stuff that they're buying or

00:41:51.160 or wearing or consuming. So there are ways to do it, but, but not necessarily the biggest trick

00:41:55.860 to this, even if it's not necessarily high end, because it depends. I mean, $200 for a suit is

00:42:02.120 not high end, but $200 for a decent t-shirt is pretty dang high end. And so it depends on what

00:42:07.940 you're buying and what it is that you're in. But what I, what I recommend most guys get familiar

00:42:12.500 with, and this is one of the benefits of the time that we live in. Now you go to a department store

00:42:17.560 like a Macy's or a Nordstrom or even like a JCPenney or a Kohl's or a Dillard's or something

00:42:22.140 else. And they have to appeal to as many people as possible in order to make, in order to be

00:42:27.240 profitable because they're, they're focused on a particular like actual physical storefront and

00:42:32.080 what the people are that come in and buy from them. Internet changed everything with that.

00:42:36.720 With online brands, you can have brands that cater to a very specific body type or a very

00:42:41.900 specific aesthetic or a very specific desire for it being made in the USA or it's untreated cotton

00:42:48.560 or all these other things, because now they can sell to a global market. And so they can actually

00:42:53.640 still be profitable without being limited to what the geography is. And so the biggest thing

00:42:57.640 is to find the brands that work for you based on the signals that you want to send based on what

00:43:02.160 works for your body, and then be really loyal to those brands so that you can go out and continue

00:43:07.600 to buy stuff and support them. And then the stuff's going to look really good on you. So like for me,

00:43:10.900 one of my favorite brands is a company called buck mason they're based out of california

00:43:14.800 look at that and i love the fit on their stuff it fits me perfectly i love the way that it feels

00:43:20.860 uh the quality of it is really good and the price point is enough that it feels premium

00:43:25.560 but it also doesn't feel like uh you know i gotta save up to to get something from these guys and

00:43:30.240 so it checks all these boxes for me really well and what's cool is that that's all subjective

00:43:34.960 for every man and it's worth it to find out what the brands are uh that it's worth being loyal to

00:43:39.780 in that regard. Okay. And then, so you talked about Gucci and how some people overdo it on

00:43:47.600 that just for status. Is that different when you're buying something like the Rolex watch

00:43:52.380 because it's not a main piece? How does, how do you differentiate between when it's status

00:43:58.120 seeking or not? Good question. I like that. Okay. So I would say that there's two things to that.

00:44:03.980 The first one. Yeah. I think you're totally right that it depends on how much attention it draws.

00:44:08.200 okay because if it's a giant t-shirt that's just you know almost crassly blaring it in your face

00:44:13.700 that's very different than being something that's a little bit subtle i think that's why

00:44:16.860 gucci loafers or something can be a little bit more so because they're in a little bit more

00:44:20.820 subtle location and then the other thing too has to do with oh man mikaela there's so many

00:44:27.920 things to go into this okay because part of it has to do with your archetypes the more rakish

00:44:33.620 you are then the more you can the more you can kind of command that that attention and the more

00:44:37.900 you can do it that way. The higher your status is within either your respective tribe or just

00:44:44.060 kind of society in general, the more you can get away with. I always use Conor McGregor as a good

00:44:48.640 example of this, where he can wear this kind of stuff because it's actually this like giant

00:44:54.920 middle finger, go to hell attitude to what the MMA community used to be, where it was all like

00:45:00.000 the tap out stuff and the affliction stuff. And he comes in wearing couture stuff or wearing

00:45:05.260 well-fitted suits that have these big patterns and, but he could only do it because he was,

00:45:10.300 he's good enough as a fighter that he can back it up. Some kid that's just brand new and isn't

00:45:14.940 winning any bouts. He's not, he's not actually winning any fights. If he dresses like that,

00:45:18.860 it's a joke. So your relative mastery or status within a particular organization comes into play

00:45:24.480 there too. And then the other thing to factor in is even like Rolex, for an example, is how much

00:45:30.720 of a status signal is something within a particular tribe versus within society in general. Because

00:45:37.600 I mean, if you show up with a Submariner, like a really big flashy Rolex, most people are going

00:45:42.140 to recognize that for what it is. But you show up with the one I'm looking at is like a 1984

00:45:46.960 blue dial date just. And for most people that I'm around, they're never even going to know what it

00:45:53.140 is. But to the people that are in kind of like my menswear tribe or my entrepreneurial tribe,

00:45:57.640 they're going to recognize it for what it is and they're going to going to be able to appreciate

00:46:01.340 it in a different way so there's all these little things that come into play with it

00:46:05.380 and it can sound really complex and complicated but again it's the same thing with language

00:46:09.280 where you learn what jargon you can use i mean we see this on different uh online communities and

00:46:15.300 how uh your your different nomenclature these words mean this or those words mean that and and

00:46:21.200 it's almost this kind of like intra-tribal in order to bring people in and we communicate

00:46:25.940 between us and at the same time exclude the people that aren't like us yeah it kind of serves both of

00:46:31.060 these functions and so a lot of clothing accessories all of that has those same those

00:46:35.060 same functions too okay that makes sense that's all good um what are your you can even see that

00:46:42.900 historically where um like the whole idea of you don't wear white um but except between memorial

00:46:48.100 day and labor day that was just to separate old money from new money where the new money didn't

00:46:54.080 get those rules. And so it was a way for the old money to be able to exclude them. Same thing with

00:46:58.260 you don't wear black, you don't mix black and brown with formal wear. That was a British 1.00

00:47:01.960 aristocracy thing that when you were out in your country house, you were brown. And when you were 0.94

00:47:06.140 in the city, you were black. And so it was really crass to mix the two of them because it was 1.00

00:47:11.080 indicative of the fact that you didn't have a country estate that you could go to. You didn't

00:47:15.120 understand the social nuances of what the aristocracy were and how they operated. And so

00:47:20.140 it was this very specific way of we're us and you're them. And we create these arbitrary rules

00:47:25.300 to keep it separate. And the more complicated and the more limiting those rules are the happier we

00:47:30.520 are about it. Nice. I hadn't heard about that. Don't wear white until I don't even know what it

00:47:37.280 is. It's Memorial day and labor day. I'm Canadian. I don't know. So you can't wear it. Yeah. You can't

00:47:41.540 wear it until Memorial day and you can't wear it after labor day. So it's a summer only color

00:47:45.320 white yeah okay right somebody told me that this year I was like what are you talking about

00:47:52.980 what year is that from when did that stop being a thing is it still a thing I well it depends I

00:47:59.700 mean if you're up in New England if you're up at Montauk or something that's still a thing

00:48:02.820 but for the for most of the rest of us not really and that was just that was what like rich people

00:48:08.000 knew about it was arbitrary rules that they created to separate the old wealth from the

00:48:13.480 new wealth. Interesting. So you can find out what all those rules are and then copy them,

00:48:20.400 sneak your way in. And whether you like it or not, you exist in a world that has those rules.

00:48:26.220 If you work at Facebook, you have rules like that. You don't show up to work in a suit. You get

00:48:30.600 laughed out of the room. You, it doesn't matter where you work or what you do. If you go to

00:48:35.340 your landscaping job and you're wearing something that's a little bit too skinny,

00:48:39.200 or it's a little bit too high quality, and they're going to poke fun at you. They're going to,

00:48:42.400 they're going to. And so you get this men intuitively get this because we're constantly

00:48:46.380 evaluating the heart, the hierarchy. And ever since we were teenagers, we've understood that

00:48:51.040 clothing is a part of it. And what I want men to start to do is do that more intentionally

00:48:57.360 as opposed to reactionally or reactively. Yeah. Do you think this has a lot like you paying

00:49:03.800 attention to style like this? Do you think this has a lot to do with personality versus people

00:49:07.760 who are like, nah, I don't care. This is comfortable. I think to some extent it does.

00:49:17.060 And, you know, if you kind of like to nerd out on social dynamics or if you like to understand

00:49:22.300 how people work, I think to a large extent being more in like the refined or the rakish archetypes,

00:49:27.580 you're going to have more of a propensity to go this way because it does fall so much within

00:49:32.240 understanding dynamics and human interaction and all of that. What I would argue though,

00:49:37.360 is for the vast majority of men who just kind of, oh, I don't care. You challenge them to do

00:49:42.340 something like, okay, wear a pink dress for the next week and tell me if you don't feel different

00:49:46.320 and tell me if you actually don't care. But for them, the caring is in the not caring. Their

00:49:52.440 antipathy is just as emotional of a reaction to their clothing as somebody else's affinity to it

00:49:58.760 is. And very few men actually have a true indifference to what their appearance is.

00:50:03.100 Mm-hmm. And I'd argue that it's not even about what you care about. It's about how society

00:50:10.200 perceives you and you don't have a lot of control over that. So you can say,

00:50:13.380 oh, this doesn't matter. This is my style, but it's going to deeply affect everything you do.

00:50:20.040 Totally. And so why, why handicap yourself when you can use it to your advantage instead?

00:50:25.460 Yeah. It's like life hacks, these things. And it's crazy. I remember reading about Marilyn Monroe

00:50:31.140 Oh, and she said she because she had her an insane style, right, with her hair and her winged eyeliner and her lipstick. 0.99

00:50:37.820 She had something really serious going on.

00:50:40.560 And she said she could just turn that off.

00:50:44.140 She just dressed in a completely different way.

00:50:45.840 Nobody would recognize her.

00:50:47.580 Yeah.

00:50:48.360 So it's like, have you seen Zooey Deschanel without bangs or glasses?

00:50:51.960 Yeah.

00:50:52.300 Like you don't even recognize her.

00:50:53.840 Right.

00:50:54.500 Yeah.

00:50:55.400 Yeah.

00:50:55.780 And it's the whole idea of Clark Kent in Superman.

00:50:58.240 And the only difference is he's in a suit and he has glasses on and the little curly

00:51:01.560 coif is gone and that's it.

00:51:02.600 But it really, we get so used to seeing people certain ways that it does become a different

00:51:06.700 identity as soon as you start to change it.

00:51:09.060 Yeah.

00:51:09.760 And I suppose for people who are interested in, like I talked to Robert Green recently

00:51:14.120 and he does the art of seduction.

00:51:15.920 That was a really fun conversation.

00:51:18.280 If you're interested in how to like maneuver your way in social situations and conversations

00:51:23.860 and what you should say and how you should act, then you should also be interested.

00:51:27.140 very interested in how you look absolutely and he obviously understands that i mean you look at like

00:51:32.960 the 48 laws of power and you look at men like napoleon or washington or machiavelli and how

00:51:38.940 much these men understood the importance of appearance washington i'm going through a

00:51:43.400 biography on him right now it's insane the amount of time and energy that he put into not only his

00:51:48.060 appearance but that of his whole household and even that of his troops because he understood

00:51:52.260 the value of it not only in the social dynamics but also in the self-perception component too

00:51:56.340 so yeah that wouldn't surprise me at all that green would understand that that's very interesting

00:52:00.320 i bet that corresponds because i was thinking maybe it's extroversion i like personality

00:52:05.680 but like maybe it's extroversion you wanting to fit in or pick up on other people but maybe it's

00:52:10.740 also conscientiousness yeah yeah cool cool okay tanner where can people find you online if they

00:52:20.360 want more help. Do you, do you get clients specifically? Do you do this online? Yep. Yep.

00:52:26.100 So if you want to reach out to me, uh, the best place to be able to kind of find me and connect

00:52:30.920 us through, uh, social media. I'm most active on Twitter and Instagram and it's at Tanner Guzzi.

00:52:36.520 So T-A-N-N-E-R-G-U-Z-Y. Uh, the main site that you can look me up on is masculine-style.com. 0.57

00:52:43.280 And that's where you can look at more coaching and all of that. And then also I've published

00:52:46.280 a book on this called the appearance of power. And you can find that on Amazon and we've got an

00:52:51.220 audible version of it, a Kindle paperback, all of that. So if you want to kind of, well, you know,

00:52:55.740 cut your teeth on the general concepts, that's a really good place to start, but I love being able

00:53:00.340 to chat with people online. My DMS are open. And so come, come talk to me on there. I do a lot of

00:53:06.100 this stuff, especially on Instagram to showcase what a lot of these principles are, because I

00:53:10.040 know with a conversation like this, a lot of this can, can sound kind of heady. And it's a whole lot

00:53:14.440 easier to understand these concepts when I'm showing visual examples. And so Twitter and

00:53:18.480 Instagram are really good places to start to see more of that. Okay. Thank you very much for coming

00:53:23.540 on. That was interesting. Thanks for having me on. I loved it.

00:53:44.440 You

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - November 02, 2021

123. How Men Can Instantly Look More Attractive ｜ Tanner Guzy

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