TRIGGERnometry - Fashion Expert： What Clothes Tell Us About Culture, Politics and War

00:00:01.000 Now that I look at the 2020s, what's happening with clothing, it's coming back to the 1950s.

00:00:06.420 So I think we're coming out of a...

00:00:07.780 It's almost like the clothing today is a re-emergence from a war.

00:00:10.980 Which is interesting, like we didn't actually have a very big physical war in the West,

00:00:15.140 but we surely had a cultural war.

00:00:17.160 What does she really stand for?

00:00:19.380 Like, I can't really answer that, so how do I design an image for somebody

00:00:22.560 who I don't even know what their ethos is?

00:00:24.040 Do you guys know?

00:00:24.820 Nobody knows.

00:00:26.320 When you're old and everybody questions your mental capacity

00:00:29.440 and thinks you're about to die, what you don't want to do is you don't want to wear a black suit.

00:00:33.560 Because what does black psychologically trigger in us? 0.97

00:00:35.640 The idea of a funeral, the idea of death. 0.60

00:00:37.740 To me, he was designed to fail, and I was like, oh, they're going to replace him.

00:00:42.840 Dimitri, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:44.440 You're someone who's made suits and other clothes for a bunch of problematic people

00:00:48.860 like Jordan Peterson, Zuby, me, a bunch of others.

00:00:52.800 And a lot of more famous people than those three, too.

00:00:56.560 Why have you done that?

00:00:58.000 To get on the show.

00:00:59.880 Well, it's worked.

00:01:01.280 Yeah, I was just thinking, have you guys run out of guests?

00:01:04.620 And we have.

00:01:05.300 Yeah, it's like, well, who's next?

00:01:06.360 Like, Piers Morgan's barber?

00:01:09.060 No, the main thing.

00:01:11.180 Well, so before any of the celebrity stuff, right?

00:01:12.840 Like, I started a company in 2010, which became a global company by about 2015.

00:01:17.140 We were selling in, like, 15, 16, 20 countries.

00:01:19.420 I think we're 26 or 27 now.

00:01:20.900 And the thing about the – so at first, I kind of wanted to see, like, how far I could

00:01:27.660 go.

00:01:28.220 I think in anything.

00:01:28.980 Like, anything you do, you want to see what your potential can be.

00:01:31.020 Because eventually, like, the financial goals that I had set, I had met and exceeded them.

00:01:34.940 The company was doing really well.

00:01:35.980 And I thought, well, I'd like to get The Rock in one of our suits, in one of my suits.

00:01:40.900 And so I put The Rock as the background on my computer.

00:01:45.480 And I would have this image.

00:01:46.560 And so every day, I'd go to work.

00:01:47.500 I'm like, how do I get The Rock?

00:01:49.740 And eventually, I got into the movie Skyscraper, which was a big summer blog buster.

00:01:55.660 It was like, you know, The Rock jumping from Skyscraper.

00:01:57.680 Skyscraper was set in Hong Kong.

00:01:58.800 It was filmed in Vancouver.

00:01:59.680 So I did.

00:02:00.400 And if you guys want a crazy story about how I met The Rock for that movie, it was just

00:02:03.240 wild.

00:02:03.540 But I ended up doing 12 suits for the movie Skyscraper.

00:02:07.500 And I never got to actually meet The Rock.

00:02:10.140 And there's a great story behind that.

00:02:12.500 And I thought, well, who's next?

00:02:14.440 Because the idea is you want to aspire to grow.

00:02:16.620 You want to aspire to be better.

00:02:17.560 So I thought, well, who's next?

00:02:18.700 And at the time, it was maybe about 2016, I started watching Jordan Peterson videos on

00:02:23.660 YouTube.

00:02:24.200 And he had some really great Harvard lectures that he had recorded.

00:02:27.500 It was before, kind of, it was maybe right around the Bill C-16 thing that was coming

00:02:30.920 out in Canada, but it was way before he was famous, right?

00:02:33.220 So I had Maps of Meaning, which I completely could not understand at all, because it's like

00:02:37.200 20, 30 IQ points above my level of grasping things.

00:02:40.360 So I was like, okay.

00:02:41.200 But great lectures, very interesting.

00:02:42.680 I thought, I want to get Jordan Peterson as a client.

00:02:46.040 Now, his brother, he has a brother, Joel, who is a client who had been getting some suits

00:02:50.220 from our company.

00:02:50.900 I think he's up in Regina in Canada.

00:02:52.820 So I tried that avenue and different avenues.

00:02:55.020 But getting to Jordan is like really, really hard.

00:02:56.560 And so I kind of thought, okay, maybe it's not going to happen.

00:03:00.880 And then I was watching an interview with an NFL player telling his story about how he

00:03:05.420 got into the NFL.

00:03:06.460 And that's actually when it hit me.

00:03:07.960 And the story was that he was watching the NFL as a young boy with his uncle.

00:03:11.640 And he told his uncle, like, wow, you know, this guy is an amazing football player.

00:03:14.940 He was watching, I don't know, one of the great NFL linebackers.

00:03:19.020 And his uncle goes, you know, that could be you when you grow up.

00:03:21.500 And he goes, well, why would it be me?

00:03:24.140 And he goes, well, why not you?

00:03:25.160 Somebody's going to have that job.

00:03:26.920 And it kind of a light went off in my head.

00:03:28.540 I'm like, you know, why not me?

00:03:29.600 Like, I'm really good at what I do.

00:03:31.360 Our company has a lot of social proof.

00:03:33.220 We've got tens of thousands of clients around the world.

00:03:35.720 Lots of people go on camera wearing our suits all the time.

00:03:38.660 Who could possibly be more competent to make suits for Jordan Peterson?

00:03:42.380 That's going to sound selfish and arrogant, but why not me?

00:03:45.480 And so I just went in with that approach.

00:03:46.880 It was why not me?

00:03:47.540 And on the journey towards that, you know, we were talking about, like,

00:03:52.080 Lanox Lewis started getting suits from us, Alice Cooper,

00:03:55.200 which was a complete random occurrence.

00:03:57.400 And then by the time I finally got a reply from somebody on Jordan's team,

00:04:01.200 it was like, oh, we saw your work with Alice Cooper and we like it.

00:04:04.180 I guess what I was asking as well is the extent to which there's an ideological dimension to this,

00:04:10.000 because I don't know if you make suits for Bernie Sanders or AOC, right?

00:04:14.780 Do you know what I mean?

00:04:15.500 So I guess what I'm getting at is, is there something about the worldview of some of the people that you work with?

00:04:20.780 A hundred percent.

00:04:21.560 What is that?

00:04:22.460 Well, so like yourself, I emigrated from the Soviet Union.

00:04:28.320 And so obviously anybody that comes from the Soviet Union or from Cuba does not think very highly of communism or like hardcore socialism whatsoever.

00:04:36.740 Like nobody's like, nobody defected to the Soviet Union that had any sense of sanity, right?

00:04:42.360 So when I heard Jordan Peterson promulgate, you know, his worldview based on, I suppose, competence hierarchies,

00:04:51.320 that spoke very much to me because I started a business.

00:04:54.060 I employ people.

00:04:54.820 I watch how people operate all the time and how people progress through competency and regress through incompetency.

00:05:00.940 And of course, try to prig their way into higher positions, like try to, you know,

00:05:06.400 sanctimoniously say they deserve something that they don't actually deserve because their results don't show it.

00:05:10.680 So I was like, I like that worldview at the time.

00:05:13.280 Also, you know, this whole leftist thing was becoming pretty apparent and then COVID hit.

00:05:19.500 And all of a sudden, you know, everything I had worked for was immediately taken away for an indefinite amount of time

00:05:25.540 because we're a company that measures people for suits.

00:05:28.240 We're a company that travels to people's offices and touches people to do that.

00:05:31.780 Nobody's wearing suits.

00:05:32.600 Nobody's going to the office, can't touch anyone.

00:05:34.840 And I thought, well, it feels a lot like a government or governments are really impeding my dreams.

00:05:41.280 Now, notwithstanding, there was some other stuff happening, obviously, on the virus side,

00:05:45.940 which, you know, was pretty apparent early on, at least to me,

00:05:49.260 that it wasn't as risky as we were being told on, you know, mainstream media.

00:05:56.020 Like I started doing a lot of statistical stuff.

00:05:58.080 I, you know, laid out spreadsheets, started doing statistical analyses.

00:06:00.440 Like myself, like I'm an insane person, right?

00:06:02.760 I have a lot of friends with like math and physics degrees, you know, from university,

00:06:05.620 and I would run the analyses by them.

00:06:07.100 And they're like, yeah, this seems pretty accurate.

00:06:09.120 And then here was the guy that was saying, hey, like this is how the world should look like.

00:06:14.480 And I got into Von Mises and PragerU and, you know, Dennis Prager,

00:06:17.060 and I started watching all of that.

00:06:18.580 And yeah, I think whatever frequency I picked up from that absolutely geared me towards that path.

00:06:23.160 And so you asked, well, would I do suits for like Bernie Sanders?

00:06:26.760 I wouldn't decline, you know, a client, let's say, who wants to get suits.

00:06:29.980 But obviously, I'm on a certain universal vibrational frequency that has sort of connected me to people like you, let's say.

00:06:39.300 So that's really interesting.

00:06:40.560 So when I was reading about yourself, Dimitri, and about tailoring,

00:06:47.760 I find fashion very interesting because fashion reflects the culture.

00:06:52.400 How does your fashion reflect the people that you design for and your belief and your politics?

00:06:59.900 Yeah, I thought a lot about this.

00:07:02.840 So, you know, like we're in England, right?

00:07:05.040 And the whole bespoke movement in England basically kicked off after the London fire.

00:07:11.660 I think it was what, 1666 was the Great London Fire, right?

00:07:14.080 And then Mayfair started to rebrand itself as a sort of a place where luxury merchants would go

00:07:20.200 and the aristocrats would visit those merchants there, starting with, I don't know, Prince George IV, probably,

00:07:24.960 who was kind of a profligate figure.

00:07:27.000 So what happened was as the luxury consumption started to start to elevate in England,

00:07:33.420 the society also became more liberal.

00:07:36.100 So what you saw is with cultural change is that clothing always predicated a shift towards liberalism in society.

00:07:41.020 You saw this during King George IV.

00:07:42.960 I mean, I know my clothing history, right?

00:07:45.140 Like Edward VII, again, in the early 1900s, you saw society moving more liberally.

00:07:49.880 And so a lot of the clothing brands that were actually built over those years

00:07:53.480 were built on a vision towards a more liberal society.

00:07:55.840 Tom Ford being an example of that, like Tom Ford's entire mantra is like libertine living.

00:08:01.600 What's the logic behind that?

00:08:04.000 Well, the logic is that you're spoiling yourself.

00:08:06.860 You're living sort of a sybaritic life where you're enjoying and lusting yourself into luxury and, wow, you deserve it.

00:08:16.520 How great it is for you.

00:08:17.860 And so in the 60s and 70s, you saw the cultural shift as well with like the Vietnam War,

00:08:22.460 where that's actually when the bespoke tailoring thing kind of fell apart and Savile Row was struggling

00:08:26.420 because everybody moved away from their father's uniform.

00:08:29.380 You know, it wasn't cool.

00:08:31.340 It wasn't cool.

00:08:33.280 The counterculture was liberal.

00:08:35.260 But what's really interesting to me, and this was completely serendipitous, not intentional,

00:08:39.000 is today's counterculture is not liberal.

00:08:40.760 Today's counterculture is a reawaking.

00:08:42.660 It's a renaissance.

00:08:43.820 Today's counterculture is seeking iconography.

00:08:46.480 Today's counterculture is seeking baptisms. 0.96

00:08:48.720 Today's counterculture is seeking rules, you know, and hierarchies, again, based on competence.

00:08:53.760 And I think, again, Jordan Peterson has sort of risen as the Internet's father as a central figure for that, right?

00:08:58.900 So it wasn't that I purposely set out to design anything that would, you know, invoke society into some kind of a, I don't know, conservative movement.

00:09:08.400 I just happened to work in suits, and it just so happened to align with the fact that today's society is, again, seeking the return of the gods, let's say.

00:09:15.800 And we just kind of fell into that.

00:09:17.600 And the central figures of today's social movements, like Jordan Peterson, for example, and on some level, you guys as well, of course, those figures tend to be, you know, looking for restoration to a greater society, looking for something better.

00:09:31.260 And do you think it's the structure of the suit reflects, how can I put it, the fact that the people who you dress are seeking a more structured way of life,

00:09:42.560 as opposed to the chaotic elements that extreme liberalism brings?

00:09:48.020 I'm very intentional with that.

00:09:49.160 I actually had a couple of emails with Jordan Peterson about this topic specifically.

00:09:52.300 He was meeting with a prime minister who may be controversial on the world stage, and he had, you know, sort of primed us that he had this dinner, and he put some pictures up.

00:10:00.780 And I emailed him, which was, again, kind of selfish of me, because I don't want to take up too much of his time. 0.88

00:10:05.460 He's got a lot of things to do, and, like, I'm a dumb tailor over here.

00:10:07.820 But I said, hey, Jordan, this outfit you wore with this prime minister is the wrong outfit, and here's why.

00:10:14.100 The prime minister has a military background, and you're wearing an unstructured jacket, which is, like, you know, the Italians and the British have very different views on tailoring.

00:10:21.940 The British, it's always been very structured.

00:10:23.440 Everything is military-based.

00:10:24.960 Our jackets in England are military-based.

00:10:27.020 Even peacoats and reefer jackets are based on the Navy, whereas the Italians, as the Italian tailors would say,

00:10:32.560 they like a looser-fitting, unstructured suit so they can reach over and kiss a lady's hand, okay?

00:10:37.820 You know, the British aristocrats do that stuff all the time, too.

00:10:40.580 They're just not quite so open about it, right?

00:10:43.960 So I emailed, you know, I said, you know, JP, like, this is what I think is a better option next time you meet this particular prime minister.

00:10:52.920 And I had some suits in the making for him.

00:10:54.500 I said, I want to do a structured rope shoulder, a lot more constructed, a lot more militaristic looking, and a darker tone,

00:10:59.740 so that you would pay homage and respect to the person with whom you're sitting, who has a military background,

00:11:04.440 who is an Ivy League graduate, etc., etc., etc., right?

00:11:07.440 So part of what I do for clients and what our company does for clients, of course, you have to take into consideration,

00:11:16.240 A, what they do on a daily basis, and B, what they're aspiring to project.

00:11:20.220 Well, on that very point, it's actually a fascinating conversation because we've obviously just had the election in the United States.

00:11:28.820 And I guess the fact that the Democrat person was a woman sort of changes the dimensions of this slightly.

00:11:34.440 But I'm curious to get your analysis on, you know, what people in those two movements,

00:11:41.140 because they're really philosophical and intellectual movements more than politics.

00:11:46.260 What are we likely to see?

00:11:48.880 And what does Trump, the way Trump dresses, say about what he's trying to project and vice versa with the Democrats?

00:11:54.080 I recorded like a very boring one hour sort of dialogue with one of my co-workers when Trump was still running against Biden,

00:12:01.920 right before Biden was replaced.

00:12:03.180 And it was about the difference in what the Biden-Trump debate and what the two potential presidential candidates were wearing to the debate, right?

00:12:11.240 And what I proposed from that video is that Biden will be immediately replaced after this debate.

00:12:19.580 And it was pre-planned before the debate just based on what Biden was wearing at the debate, okay?

00:12:25.080 And I made a very cogent argument towards it.

00:12:27.220 And I still remember those points, right?

00:12:28.640 Because I'm looking at the candidate.

00:12:30.940 You know, we all see the world through the lens of whatever it is that we do, right?

00:12:33.680 Like a doctor might be looking for signs of dementia in Biden, you know?

00:12:37.480 I think we all were.

00:12:38.460 Sure, sure.

00:12:39.420 You know, but I'm looking as a clothier, as a haberdasher.

00:12:42.200 I see Biden's outfit and I go, oh, they're going to replace him.

00:12:45.420 That's quite a big name.

00:12:46.300 Number of things.

00:12:46.980 So remember when Trump ran the first time against Hillary, Trump had a sort of ominous message because he himself had an ominous image, right?

00:12:54.940 He wore very dark suits that were completely oversized.

00:12:57.960 He kind of came in as he looked like a classic American industrialist, kind of like a Henry Ford figure.

00:13:03.180 And he came in and said, guys, we need rules.

00:13:05.100 We need boundaries.

00:13:05.900 We need terrorists.

00:13:06.500 We need all of these things.

00:13:07.520 And all of his messaging was negative, negative, negative.

00:13:10.160 Trump walks out for the debate with Biden.

00:13:11.920 He's wearing a Kennedy blue suit, a light blue suit.

00:13:13.900 And I go, oh, my God, what a brilliant guy.

00:13:16.620 He's wearing a light blue suit, which shows a message of hope, which shows a message of perseverance, which shows a message of, you know, illuminating the future, which was not Trump's image in the first.

00:13:26.440 And I did a very careful and a very, very, you know, granular analysis of what Trump wore in the 2016 versus 24 election.

00:13:33.760 OK, and then Biden walks out and I said, this is wrong.

00:13:36.800 Number one, Biden went a shade darker on his suits.

00:13:39.100 That was an intentional decision.

00:13:40.280 There's no way somebody dressing Biden would miss that.

00:13:42.700 But when you're old, when you're old and everybody questions your mental capacity and thinks you're about to die, what you don't want to do is you don't want to wear a black suit.

00:13:51.980 Because what is black psychologically triggering us? 1.00

00:13:54.140 The idea of a funeral, the idea of death.

00:13:56.280 And he went a tone darker.

00:13:57.300 He's wearing a very dark navy blue suit.

00:13:59.400 I go, that is not the color you put an 80 year old guy in who might have dementia.

00:14:03.420 Number one.

00:14:04.040 Number two, he was wearing an overhand tie knot, which shows haptic incapability.

00:14:08.480 An overhand tie knot is the first knot your father teaches you to tie.

00:14:10.820 It's kind of the small little knot you tie it very quickly.

00:14:12.960 I guarantee you, Biden doesn't tie his own ties.

00:14:15.500 But the fact that they put him in an overhand knot, I was like, oh, they're showing that he's haptically incapable.

00:14:19.960 So immediately I went right to his cufflinks and he's not wearing cufflinks.

00:14:22.800 He's wearing button cuffs.

00:14:24.080 And I'm going, OK, if I'm dressing an 80 year old guy and people are asking, hey, is this guy potentially incapable of leading a country?

00:14:30.160 I'm giving him, you know, a beautiful full Windsor tie.

00:14:32.780 I'm giving him cufflinks to show that he's able to eloquently place cuffs into us.

00:14:37.960 You know, I'm giving him a lighter color suit.

00:14:40.020 There was other.

00:14:40.560 He wore the wrong collar.

00:14:41.680 So he's got an oblong face.

00:14:43.040 I you never wear a point collar with an oblong face because it shows like a mismatch.

00:14:47.340 And it was like to me, he was designed to fail.

00:14:49.920 And I was like, oh, they're going to replace him.

00:14:51.160 That's so interesting.

00:14:53.860 So from those little tells, you could you could see the fact that he was already yesterday's news compared with Trump, who was actually showing a message of hope, a beacon of positivity.

00:15:06.580 Now, what did you think of the way Kamala was styled?

00:15:09.220 Because obviously she's a woman, so that's different.

00:15:12.100 Yeah.

00:15:12.300 You know, the thing about Kamala. 0.50

00:15:13.520 So obviously all the female candidates in the U.S. that I see, well, Hillary and Kamala and even AOC when she's on camera, they're wearing they're wearing pantsuits. 1.00

00:15:20.240 Right.

00:15:20.640 And I'm just I'm not sure how much you can really deviate from that as a female leader.

00:15:24.380 And I don't want to, you know, come off as like saying, oh, that's a sexist thing.

00:15:26.940 I don't really know how to signal competency better than with a suit.

00:15:31.020 So I didn't really see Kamala wearing anything that would.

00:15:33.600 Well, first of all, what the heck is her branding anyways?

00:15:36.900 That that might be the more that might be the more, you know, the more the more base question.

00:15:41.740 Like, what what does she really stand for?

00:15:44.260 Like, I can't really answer that.

00:15:45.900 So how do I design an image for somebody who I don't even know what their ethos is?

00:15:48.860 Do you guys know?

00:15:49.740 Nobody knows.

00:15:50.640 Right.

00:15:51.300 That's a really good point.

00:15:52.320 I guess an interesting question there might be.

00:15:54.240 Is it kind of unfair for women? 1.00

00:15:57.420 Because for a woman, you are either trying to project strength, in which case you might 1.00

00:16:03.940 look a bit odd.

00:16:05.200 A pantsuit is like very weird.

00:16:08.100 It's a weird thing for a woman to wear in like Hillary Clinton doesn't look normal. 1.00

00:16:12.360 Yep.

00:16:12.560 Especially when she's got that Stalin-esque weird, you know the name. 0.99

00:16:16.260 Sure, sure, sure.

00:16:16.820 You know what I mean?

00:16:17.520 Yeah.

00:16:17.700 But on the other hand, you can't like wear a mini skirt and have your boobs out either. 1.00

00:16:23.340 It's kind of probably a very hard thing to balance for a woman who's attempting to go 1.00

00:16:27.200 for the president.

00:16:27.660 Well, I don't want to overstep my boundaries of my own, you know, domain of expertise.

00:16:30.960 But like is leadership has for most of human existence been a male-dominated domain.

00:16:37.540 And that domain tends to, you know, compete on things like, well, intelligence, number

00:16:40.840 one.

00:16:41.120 And obviously women are just as intelligent as men. 1.00

00:16:43.580 But also physical prowess and power is an element towards leadership because there are times

00:16:48.220 that we have conflict.

00:16:49.360 And how do you resolve that?

00:16:50.400 Right now we're seeing conflict being resolved in the domain of violence, which is a male

00:16:53.620 domain.

00:16:54.280 Like I don't know how women can, you know, compete in that domain whatsoever. 1.00

00:16:58.940 You know, what we've seen from women in terms of how they project leadership, at least 1.00

00:17:03.620 what I see from an international scale, you know, I don't want to step outside my domain

00:17:06.560 of knowledge, but I see them leading with this message of empathetic leadership.

00:17:09.920 But I haven't really been able to understand what exactly that means.

00:17:13.860 And I had a conversation with Chad GPT the other day.

00:17:17.720 And I asked Chad GPT, I said, can you tell me what you think of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand

00:17:21.640 as a leader?

00:17:22.860 And it said, well, you know, she exemplified beautiful, empathetic leadership.

00:17:26.100 And I said, can you describe what exactly empathetic leadership means?

00:17:29.240 And Chad GPT was like, oh, she led, you know, with her heart first and caring for people.

00:17:32.680 And I said, OK, well, she said that during the COVID pandemic in New Zealand, we would like

00:17:36.800 to have a two-class society.

00:17:38.840 And Chad GPT replied and it said, well, yes, but that was a way to reward people for

00:17:43.260 taking the vaccine.

00:17:44.000 And I said, how is it rewarding people to have individual freedom of, you know, movement,

00:17:50.060 individual freedom of autonomy over their habitus?

00:17:52.240 Isn't that something that's implied with our social contract with society that we are

00:17:55.440 free to begin with?

00:17:56.800 And the opposite of that is not promoting freedom, but actually taking away freedom, which

00:18:00.460 is inherently given to people.

00:18:02.300 And Chad GPT was like, I must reconsider my answer and determine better what empathetic

00:18:06.620 leadership means.

00:18:07.180 So if Chad GPT can't answer it, like, how can I answer it?

00:18:10.480 But, you know, it's a good point because I was thinking about someone when you were talking

00:18:15.580 about female leadership. 0.99

00:18:16.600 And we tend to always look to the modern when it comes to female leadership. 1.00

00:18:20.720 And of course we should, because we live, that's where the time that we live in.

00:18:24.340 But let's look back at one of the most iconic leaders that has ever existed.

00:18:29.560 And one of the most iconic monarchs that has ever existed, Elizabeth I.

00:18:34.560 Right, right.

00:18:35.580 So let's look at her because she's somebody, everybody knows Elizabeth I.

00:18:40.040 She was somebody who dominated the world stage, who was respected as a leader, even though

00:18:46.080 her own father, Henry VIII, would have preferred her to be a boy.

00:18:51.320 So I guess I would ask, was she like a CEO or like a chairman?

00:18:58.900 Because that's different, right?

00:19:00.500 Thatcher was CEO.

00:19:01.720 Correct.

00:19:01.980 But so, but also Thatcher was to me a fractal of a Golda Mare.

00:19:05.520 You know, like if you want to talk about the ultimate quintessential, you know, female

00:19:09.340 leader that dominated in a male hierarchy, that's Golda Mare. 1.00

00:19:12.420 And what was she like?

00:19:13.600 Golda?

00:19:14.120 Yeah.

00:19:14.460 Well, I mean, how would you, how would you imagine?

00:19:17.040 Can we just pause?

00:19:17.900 Who is Golda Mare? 1.00

00:19:18.920 Because there's going to be people who don't know.

00:19:20.120 Well, she was one of, she was the first basically leader of a, first female leader of a democratic 0.92

00:19:25.640 country, prime minister of Israel.

00:19:26.920 And not only the prime minister of Israel, but the prime minister of Israel during like,

00:19:30.360 you know, some of the biggest war the country has ever fought for its own survival.

00:19:33.520 And we're talking about military intervention.

00:19:35.720 You're talking about, I mean, which is, again, that's the male domain. 0.97

00:19:38.180 And she dominated in that domain because she became the prime minister and was fairly popular. 1.00

00:19:43.020 And Margaret Thatcher, again, when you think of Margaret Thatcher, you don't think short

00:19:46.160 skirts and all that. 1.00

00:19:47.500 But here's the thing though, Iron Lady, nobody who met her, and I know people who used to

00:19:54.340 work for her and know her, they all said that she was incredibly feminine and powerful with 0.98

00:19:58.520 her femininity.

00:19:59.460 Like she would use it very, very well.

00:20:01.960 So Wes, this is what I meant about Hillary Clinton.

00:20:04.580 There's a kind of, it feels like this person has tried to make themselves not be a woman.

00:20:10.020 Do you know what I mean?

00:20:10.760 That femininity is just gone, which I'm sure was there or even is there at certain points, 0.99

00:20:16.180 but it's been suppressed deliberately.

00:20:18.480 Whereas with Thatcher, from what I know, she wasn't afraid of people knowing that she's

00:20:24.260 a woman and actually using that to sort of flirt with Gorbachev or whatever in a very

00:20:29.300 playful way.

00:20:29.820 I think Justin Trudeau does that too.

00:20:32.840 But tell us about Golda Meir a little bit more.

00:20:35.040 What was she like?

00:20:35.900 And by the way, you know, whether dress and her and Thatcher, whether that was a part of

00:20:40.220 it.

00:20:40.700 Well, I, again, this is going into maybe a domain I'm not super deeply familiar with.

00:20:44.700 I know their economic policies.

00:20:45.960 I know their international policies.

00:20:47.920 I just enjoy history.

00:20:48.800 And you guys have a lot of historians on the show.

00:20:50.260 There's some books back there that I've read, right?

00:20:52.580 It's hard for me to quantify this into words.

00:20:54.920 And maybe you guys can do it.

00:20:55.840 But can you imagine a leader in a cocktail dress?

00:20:59.780 Hard.

00:21:00.940 There's some dissonance happening, right?

00:21:02.460 I don't know how to, I don't, I'm like, I'm not a psychologist.

00:21:04.600 Do you think a woman can imagine a woman in a cocktail dress as a leader? 1.00

00:21:08.060 Do you think it's because we're chauvinistic male kids?

00:21:10.060 No, not at all.

00:21:10.560 No, because, because, um, this is really good, interesting conversation.

00:21:15.220 I don't think so.

00:21:16.080 And again, I, again, there's going to be somebody that's more educated in this field than me.

00:21:18.880 That's going to come along and give a different hypothesis here.

00:21:20.780 But like women would feel very threatened by women who are, you know, coquettish, let's 1.00

00:21:27.600 say, and have a certain sex appeal.

00:21:29.240 Like women get competitive with other women, right? 1.00

00:21:31.480 Really?

00:21:32.000 Of course.

00:21:32.500 Yeah.

00:21:33.060 Of course.

00:21:33.600 Shocking.

00:21:34.780 So, so, and you know what, what else is interesting?

00:21:38.560 You know, you talk about empathetic leadership and you're like, well, we, there's an interesting

00:21:42.420 study.

00:21:42.740 Like I do a lot of fundraiser events with our company because it helps us garner new clients.

00:21:46.260 And there's some studies, a lot of studies that actually have consistently shown that

00:21:50.260 when you have beautiful women at a fundraiser event, men give way more money.

00:21:53.660 And we've seen this in our company.

00:21:54.920 Like when you have a beautiful female sales representative, we just see the package size, the basket size 1.00

00:21:59.180 she sells is like way higher than a dude, which, which is like, again, nobody's talking

00:22:03.080 about it, but we see it in the numbers.

00:22:04.800 And so I do wonder like what kind of empathy that would evoke for men if they were to see

00:22:10.640 that in a female leader. 1.00

00:22:11.600 But I don't know what that, would that incite men to, to rise up and fight for their country

00:22:16.380 and die in war?

00:22:17.180 I don't know.

00:22:17.400 Cocktail dress, probably not.

00:22:18.600 But I suppose the question would be, given that we live in a world that is attempting to

00:22:24.560 balance this out and whether you think it's possible or not is a different question.

00:22:27.980 But we do see a lot of female leaders coming through in different countries. 1.00

00:22:32.300 In this country, the leader of the Conservative Party, the new leader is Kami Badenoch.

00:22:36.460 If you were advising somebody who was a female leader aspiring really to, who had good policies

00:22:42.800 and the right ideas even, what would your advice be?

00:22:46.300 How, how would you help them to, to kind of get the look right?

00:22:49.840 Are you trying to get me cancelled?

00:22:51.080 Yes.

00:22:51.440 Is that the whole point?

00:22:52.380 Mate, you're here.

00:22:53.220 Welcome.

00:22:53.440 All right.

00:22:53.860 If you haven't been cancelled, it's inevitable.

00:22:55.500 Well, you can only get yourself cancelled if your opinion is like, oh, Kami's a woman, 1.00

00:22:58.980 she can't do the job.

00:22:59.960 That's what would get cancelled.

00:23:01.200 Short of that.

00:23:01.800 Got it.

00:23:02.020 Thank you for setting the boundaries.

00:23:03.040 Yeah.

00:23:03.240 Yeah.

00:23:03.420 It's very nice of you.

00:23:04.060 I mean, there's also the race element.

00:23:05.700 Yeah.

00:23:06.080 Oh, yeah.

00:23:09.220 As Dimitri takes another sip of his water.

00:23:12.280 Well, so.

00:23:12.980 What would you advise be to women seeking leadership positions if they are going to do that, despite 1.00

00:23:18.540 your best advice?

00:23:19.100 Let me tell you my experience in the suit selling business and how it correlates to this.

00:23:22.160 So when I was in my early 20s, I started this company.

00:23:24.260 I'm like, I'm going to go and I'm going to sell suits to women. 0.96

00:23:26.840 I was a single guy.

00:23:28.140 And I had a lot of male clients, but I'm like, oh, let's meet some hot lady lawyers, right? 1.00

00:23:31.240 This is going to be great.

00:23:32.420 And my suits were pretty well priced.

00:23:33.740 Like we were manufacturing and leads in England at the time.

00:23:35.920 So I thought, you know, I'm going to call some female partners at law firms. 1.00

00:23:38.860 And when I met these ladies, it was not what I was expecting, you know, because I hadn't

00:23:42.600 seen a preponderance of women like that concentrated in one place in the past. 0.99

00:23:46.900 These women competed and won on male criteria, male dominated criteria. 1.00

00:23:51.280 So these women were disagreeable, highly conscientious, incredibly hardworking. 1.00

00:23:56.920 Like these were women putting in 100 hours a week at their law firm. 1.00

00:23:59.920 They were basically just dudes, like in terms of temper mentality, right?

00:24:03.040 Like I said, I hadn't met a lot of women like that in my life. 1.00

00:24:05.520 My mother is like that. 1.00

00:24:07.280 My mother is like a very conscientious, disagreeable, you know, systems analyst, data architect type 1.00

00:24:12.600 of person who's just all career, career, career.

00:24:14.480 But to meet them in a group and you kind of go, okay, that's interesting.

00:24:17.860 These women didn't win by, you know, by being coquettish. 1.00

00:24:22.560 They won actually by being competent, disagreeable and hardworking, all those other factors.

00:24:26.720 So if I were to advise a woman how to dress to win in that arena, I don't know how I could 1.00

00:24:31.120 deviate from that.

00:24:32.180 Like I think I would just say, hey, you're probably going to have to wear

00:24:35.500 a suit because there's a level of, and maybe we as a society don't know how to resolve

00:24:39.320 that, right?

00:24:39.780 Like how long have women been in the workforce? 1.00

00:24:41.480 Like 70 years?

00:24:42.540 Right.

00:24:43.240 But it's also, they need to embrace their femininity. 0.99

00:24:46.260 Like I saw the comedian Bill Burr on SNL and having this conversation, he made a joke

00:24:52.360 where it goes, ladies, the pantsuit isn't working. 1.00

00:24:55.260 We need to show a little bit more flesh.

00:24:56.720 We need to, and what he's actually saying is something quite profound, which is you can't

00:25:02.320 just adopt the masculine. 0.63

00:25:03.840 You need as a woman to combine the masculine with the feminine. 1.00

00:25:08.100 Yeah.

00:25:08.260 But this is where I, I questioned this because, and I think we had this conversation with somebody

00:25:12.540 else in an episode that hasn't maybe been released yet, which is once you start showing

00:25:17.760 flesh, then you instantly get switched into object of attraction mode, which is more difficult

00:25:25.540 to respect as a leadership position.

00:25:28.340 That's a very hard, tricky thing to balance.

00:25:30.740 I would argue as a, just as a man watching outside, because it's like, if you are, if

00:25:36.820 you are like, just like, well, she's hot, that's, you're not thinking about, I want to

00:25:41.880 follow her into battle in that moment.

00:25:44.080 But there is such a thing as when someone comes in, a woman using her attractiveness 1.00

00:25:49.100 that is powerful and it's, it's a power in the room.

00:25:51.940 Yeah.

00:25:52.220 But it's, it's a balance.

00:25:53.320 That's what I'm saying.

00:25:53.840 Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:54.780 Let me tell you guys my sort of theory on this.

00:25:57.140 And again, I'm going to be stepping into some, into some, we're all going to get canceled.

00:26:01.820 Basically three men discussing what female politicians should wear for our appeal.

00:26:05.960 Yeah.

00:26:06.380 Here's what me personally, here's, here's what frightens me.

00:26:10.540 Here's what frightens me about having a female leader in a time of war. 1.00

00:26:13.960 It's a good, it's a good starting, specifically, men inherently, and I'm talking like at our DNA

00:26:21.260 level, we understand that war is death because men have to fight and die in wars.

00:26:26.100 Women have never had to do that. 1.00

00:26:27.340 Like women, you know, even in Ukraine now, all the Ukrainian women have boyfriends in 0.98

00:26:30.640 Germany and Dubai, like they just left.

00:26:32.400 And I see that all the time, right?

00:26:33.680 Because I travel all the time and I meet Ukrainian women in coffee shops all over the world these 1.00

00:26:37.600 days.

00:26:39.240 Females? 0.99

00:26:40.020 Dmitry, just that, we should say there actually are quite a lot of women fighting in the armed 0.93

00:26:44.100 forces.

00:26:44.280 Sure, there are.

00:26:45.400 But, but, but of course, but, but the overall. 1.00

00:26:48.000 We should, this isn't me saying, doing that stupid thing that journalists do. 0.76

00:26:52.520 I just want to make sure that we're respectful to those women who are actually bravely fighting. 0.95

00:26:56.980 And I have friends that have fought in some pretty crazy battles, like female friends. 1.00

00:27:00.560 And I've got actually some guests I should introduce you to that have just gone.

00:27:03.200 But generally speaking, you're probably, of course.

00:27:05.800 So women, like, like as a man, I know that if like a war comes and I can't leave the country, 1.00

00:27:11.700 like my passport, this is where I'm at.

00:27:13.140 Like, that's what's going to happen.

00:27:14.220 It's going to be death.

00:27:15.020 But I'm not sure that women necessarily have that same instinct, because if your village

00:27:20.880 is raided and you lose the war, all the men get killed and all the women get taken basically

00:27:25.500 as concubines, the women's DNA still continues. 1.00

00:27:28.040 Like the women still get to reproduce and live their lives with technically, let's say, stronger 1.00

00:27:32.500 men as determined by battle.

00:27:33.940 So even though it's not an optimal outcome per se, it's nonetheless not death and end of

00:27:39.320 your bloodline.

00:27:39.800 So, so I know that as a man, my bloodline ends if we lose in a war.

00:27:44.700 I'm not sure if women, and again, I'm going to get a lot of hate comments in this, but 0.70

00:27:47.940 still, I'm not sure that women implicitly understand that, like, that's the end of the 0.98

00:27:52.280 bloodline forever, because for them, it's not.

00:27:54.440 And I especially worry about women leaders that don't have male offspring, because, you 0.99

00:27:58.780 know, when women have kids, they start voting more conservative. 1.00

00:28:01.160 This is a noted fact.

00:28:02.240 And I understand why when women have kids, they start voting more conservative, because if they 0.99

00:28:05.520 don't have kids, it's like, well, I have all this female empathy. 1.00

00:28:08.540 I have all this motherly love to give, right?

00:28:10.220 I'm either going to become the proverbial cat lady or get some pugs. 0.99

00:28:13.660 And, you know, now we see the spending on pets is like insane because women have less, 1.00

00:28:17.880 fewer children, right?

00:28:19.060 But now it's like that empathy starts turning towards society as a whole.

00:28:22.140 So women without kids, they tend to vote very left because, hey, let's let the migrants 1.00

00:28:25.460 in.

00:28:25.760 Let's have an open society.

00:28:26.920 Let's show love and empathy for everybody, everybody.

00:28:28.820 And the men are going, hey, these migrants, these people might not want us here. 1.00

00:28:32.240 They might be dangerous to us, you know?

00:28:34.040 And then women have kids. 1.00

00:28:35.180 And again, this is statistically backed.

00:28:36.620 Women have kids and all of a sudden they're voting more conservative. 1.00

00:28:38.860 And it's like, why?

00:28:39.500 Oh, because they now understand that their own bloodline is in danger going forward.

00:28:42.800 That's really interesting.

00:28:44.380 I wonder what the implications of that are, because it has been a point that I've heard

00:28:50.840 people make to absolutely, like, just crazy levels of consternation.

00:28:58.340 Like, you can't say that.

00:28:59.820 You can't say that a female leader of a country that doesn't have kids, that there's something 1.00

00:29:04.660 about that that's going to change the way she might see the world. 0.88

00:29:08.720 But as a parent, I can tell you as a man, it's changed my worldview becoming a parent.

00:29:14.480 And so, I think, I don't, I actually genuinely don't know why this is such a controversial

00:29:19.500 thing to say.

00:29:20.860 I think it's just because people without kids want to get really offended by it.

00:29:24.640 Well, here, like, anytime you want to test any theory, you just push it to its logical

00:29:28.280 extreme.

00:29:28.720 Have you ever seen ISIS execute female prisoners on camera?

00:29:33.360 I don't know.

00:29:34.000 No.

00:29:34.180 I don't watch many of the execution videos.

00:29:35.300 Well, but you know what I'm talking about.

00:29:36.440 Like, you know there's executions they publicize all the time and it's always guys getting

00:29:39.400 killed.

00:29:39.760 Well, you know what's happening to the women. 1.00

00:29:40.900 It's, again, not optimal.

00:29:41.820 Yes.

00:29:42.400 But again, it's also not death.

00:29:44.080 And that bloodline is not ending.

00:29:44.980 There is a certain, like, you can't see to the other side of death, you know?

00:29:48.560 So, that is a terminal thing.

00:29:49.880 And it's like, for me, for me, would I be led into battle by somebody that potentially

00:29:55.640 does not face the same consequences as me?

00:29:58.040 By the way, this is why I'll never fly in an airplane when an airplane, if airplanes are

00:30:01.240 flown by, like, robotic pilots or drones or whatever, no, I will refuse to fly in an airplane

00:30:05.840 unless there's a human pilot behind the wheel.

00:30:08.800 Why is that?

00:30:09.280 Because I don't like any system where the person responsible for my safety is not in

00:30:13.900 the same boat as me.

00:30:15.120 This is the leftist political argument, right?

00:30:17.120 Like, I don't like politicians spending my money when they haven't built anything substantive

00:30:21.000 themselves in order to understand how money really works.

00:30:23.740 Like, if you're not facing the consequences of your own actions, why should I face the

00:30:27.640 consequences of your actions? 0.97

00:30:28.540 That seems wildly hypocritical.

00:30:30.080 That's such a good point because I think that really opens up the entire debate we've

00:30:34.660 been having for the last eight or nine years, which is what you're talking about is where

00:30:38.480 populism comes from.

00:30:40.100 Populism is the revolt of people who feel that the people who govern them do not have skin

00:30:45.380 in the game and, in fact, can pursue policies that harm everybody else because they feel

00:30:50.960 virtuous or they feel compassionate or they feel empathetic, but do not pay the price when

00:30:57.020 their policies actually cause terrible consequences for everybody else, i.e. shipping jobs overseas,

00:31:03.900 i.e. mass immigration that affects people who are not protected by gated communities, who are

00:31:09.120 not protected by the comfort that they can afford.

00:31:11.580 That is a really fascinating observation, I think, and that's where really this whole

00:31:16.840 massive populist movement comes from.

00:31:18.660 It's a feeling that the people who rule us do not have skin in the game.

00:31:23.060 If you run a company, which I do, and I've had hundreds of employees, my biggest, maybe

00:31:28.180 a couple of hundred with all the front-facing salespeople, support, staff production, etc.,

00:31:34.400 you actually see very quickly how people act differently when they're not personally responsible

00:31:38.320 for the outcome, and it's freaking wild.

00:31:40.520 Yes.

00:31:41.740 I'll give you a very simple example.

00:31:43.360 There was one year where I lost about a million and a half dollars on my business because 0.98

00:31:46.440 I decided that I'm going to try to do this fair, it was the stupidest experiment I've 0.85

00:31:50.880 ever done, but that's the great thing about running a business is you always, the market 0.95

00:31:54.800 is ruthless.

00:31:55.420 It tells you exactly what works, what doesn't, right?

00:31:57.220 I moved my salespeople from commission-based to salary-based roles.

00:32:01.920 No, but it was really interesting because, no, and I'll tell you, and it's funny and it's 0.88

00:32:05.480 stupidly funny, right?

00:32:06.280 But what I realized is that a salesperson productivity in the company is actually very highly correlated 0.98

00:32:10.580 to how long they've been in the business because they build a client base, and the longer they

00:32:14.420 stay, the more the clients trust them, the more the clients spend.

00:32:16.600 So I thought, well, if I can just take that pressure off my experienced salespeople, and

00:32:20.620 some of them are like, yeah, this sounds great, then maybe things will be good because they

00:32:23.940 won't leave and clients will continue buying, and it completely tanked our sales.

00:32:26.960 So it's the worst six months of my life.

00:32:28.480 And why did it tank our sales?

00:32:29.800 Well, so we have something called sales training, right?

00:32:31.620 Sales training is like you teach somebody what to do, and it's not always intuitive on what

00:32:35.120 to do.

00:32:35.540 Like running a business or running an economy, it's not intuitive because the ideas that

00:32:40.020 you have in your head of how things work is not how things actually work.

00:32:43.100 It's the dating paradox for men, right?

00:32:45.800 If I buy her flowers and tell her she's pretty, she'll like me.

00:32:48.360 And it's like, nope, there are things that you want to work, and then there are things

00:32:52.420 that actually work, what people respond to, right?

00:32:54.660 So what ended up happening is our sales training a lot of times asks people to do things which

00:32:59.340 are uncomfortable for those people to do, like asking for a sale, asking for a bigger

00:33:02.800 sale, presenting a more expensive, a luxurious item.

00:33:05.280 These are all things that are ultimately good because you want to aspire to get the best

00:33:08.440 possible outcome for everybody.

00:33:10.000 Well, what I noticed with the people that were not on commission is that they still went to

00:33:13.140 work every day, but they refused to do anything that made them uncomfortable.

00:33:15.680 And the lesson it taught me is that like a lot of productivity happens at the edge of

00:33:21.480 desperation.

00:33:22.900 Same with dating, but like a lot of, this is like the whole porn argument, like a lot

00:33:26.200 of, you know, a lot of lack of like mating with people is the fact that men are just 0.66

00:33:29.580 significantly less desperate.

00:33:30.800 And I've been observing that, like I'm in my 40s now.

00:33:32.880 And so I look back and I have a lot of 25-year-old guys in my company and how they act.

00:33:36.660 I'm like, oh, a lot of your success just comes from desperation.

00:33:39.700 And when you remove personal responsibility, you remove an element of desperation.

00:33:44.160 And when you remove that, you know, what do you get now?

00:33:46.960 Society is like here, and sorry for saying it, but like my train today was canceled in

00:33:50.620 England.

00:33:51.340 It doesn't smell the best.

00:33:52.740 It doesn't look the best.

00:33:53.740 I don't really see a lot of very happy faces outside.

00:33:56.560 And what are people paying half their money for taxes here for?

00:33:58.940 You have to embrace discomfort in order to improve.

00:34:03.640 It doesn't matter what sector that you work in, whether you're a comedian, you can, and

00:34:08.180 you've got a comedy club and you're in a comedy club, you can do your safe set that

00:34:12.180 you know will do very well, or you can do your new jokes that might not go across well.

00:34:16.900 And the chances are they won't, but you've got to do it in order to improve.

00:34:21.280 And the problem is if you continually embrace comfort, it may feel good in the moment, but what

00:34:26.680 you're eventually sacrificing is growth.

00:34:29.420 And not only growth, it's also self-respect at the end of it.

00:34:34.400 You know, this is physics.

00:34:35.420 It's the concept of entropy.

00:34:37.300 Like neutral is negative.

00:34:38.340 Howard Schultz, I saw Howard Schultz speak when I was in university.

00:34:40.700 It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

00:34:43.160 And it was so fortunate that he came to speak at my school and he said neutral is negative.

00:34:47.620 And I've always stuck with that.

00:34:49.320 Like everything I've seen that becomes neutral, it regresses to negativity.

00:34:52.600 It's just entropy.

00:34:53.060 You can't stand still in life because even if you manage to stand still,

00:34:56.680 everyone else is still moving forward and you get left behind just as a result of that.

00:35:01.220 It's really interesting.

00:35:02.400 I mean, one of the things within that is just knowing you personally, you're someone who

00:35:06.820 has thought very carefully and has a lot of real world experience when it comes to sales.

00:35:12.560 What can you tell us about what makes a good salesperson?

00:35:16.740 What are some of the important skills there?

00:35:18.660 Well, one of the misnumbers about the profession of salespeople think that you have to be a good

00:35:22.780 talker, you have to be charismatic, you have to be gregarious.

00:35:25.660 You know, that's the movie character salesperson.

00:35:28.100 That's not true at all.

00:35:30.200 I realized like pretty early in my career that personality and results aren't very highly

00:35:35.720 correlated.

00:35:36.800 And I think Jordan Peterson spoke about that, too.

00:35:38.880 There's not a lot of connection between personality and productivity, right?

00:35:41.820 Like we all think of an accountant as like a really boring, you know, sort of consistent

00:35:46.820 person.

00:35:47.280 But I've known a lot of accountants that are super wild and just crazy guys, you know,

00:35:51.540 or gals, whatever.

00:35:53.380 So the top salespeople, you would expect them to be like, again, because we're watching a

00:35:57.940 Disney movie version of what a salesman is.

00:35:59.660 We'd expect them to be slimy and sort of, you know, honest Iago types. 1.00

00:36:03.560 But no, a lot of times they're just very similarly temper, they're similarly temperamental to what

00:36:10.000 you would expect from a high performing person in any profession.

00:36:12.320 They're highly conscientious.

00:36:13.780 They're very intelligent and they have a degree of disagree, they have a degree of disagreeability

00:36:17.860 whereby they're able to challenge and ask questions in a constructive way.

00:36:23.080 So they learn why they're doing what they're doing, right?

00:36:25.720 But I think that's true across all professions, right?

00:36:27.900 Yeah.

00:36:28.260 Yeah.

00:36:28.560 But there must be something that predisposes someone to sales versus accountants.

00:36:33.420 Propensity for risk and probably a level of testosterone.

00:36:37.340 Seriously.

00:36:37.860 You know, like I was studying, like, I have a problem with, I had a problem in school in

00:36:42.260 the sense that, like, I liked school, I did well at school, but it always bothered me that

00:36:45.520 the teachers would set these rules that I don't think they understood why they set the rules.

00:36:49.360 Like, I didn't understand.

00:36:50.280 I think you probably had a little bit of a difference as well.

00:36:51.940 I was exactly the same.

00:36:52.540 Right.

00:36:52.820 I was like, well, and the other thing is I never respected authority unless it was gained.

00:36:57.460 Right.

00:36:57.920 So you didn't get my respect by being the teacher.

00:37:01.860 You got my respect by being a good teacher.

00:37:03.900 And that's a function of being raised by Russian parents. 0.99

00:37:05.680 Because your dad would say, your mother said this, but why?

00:37:08.000 Because your mother said.

00:37:09.000 And you're like, talk to me like this.

00:37:10.560 Like, don't use that pronoun.

00:37:11.720 Don't use her.

00:37:12.580 Say your mother's like, why can't I say her?

00:37:14.540 Exactly.

00:37:15.120 And it's like, because she's your mother.

00:37:16.380 It's like, I don't understand positional authority.

00:37:18.040 And that's actually very interesting because positional authority is management and competence authority

00:37:21.860 is leadership.

00:37:22.380 And there's a big difference there.

00:37:23.480 Right.

00:37:25.520 So.

00:37:25.880 So, you know, when I observe my teachers in school, I was like, why do they have all

00:37:33.520 this authority that hasn't been earned?

00:37:35.160 And then I started reading into it as I got older.

00:37:37.420 And I understood that teachers actually, the profession of teaching attracts the lowest

00:37:41.500 level testosterone of males.

00:37:42.800 But it makes sense because teaching is safe, right?

00:37:46.940 Like you grow up, you're put into an institution and then you're like, well, I'm going to study

00:37:50.220 in the furtherance of that institution.

00:37:51.680 Then I'll go right back into that institution to uphold the institution.

00:37:54.200 There's nothing venturing outside the institution, right?

00:37:56.780 And so I started looking at the highest testosterone by profession and it was entrepreneurs, people

00:38:01.160 that start businesses, of course.

00:38:02.400 And it makes sense because testosterone is going to lead you to take risks because risk taking

00:38:06.860 is a demarcative behavior towards, you know, reproduction.

00:38:11.440 And so entrepreneurs have higher testosterone.

00:38:13.320 So to me, if you ask, you know, what is really driving guys or gals into sales?

00:38:17.020 Probably at some level, it's a higher level of testosterone.

00:38:20.220 Yeah.

00:38:20.720 Oh, you were saying it's safe.

00:38:22.100 I was like, I taught in East London.

00:38:23.600 It's not that safe.

00:38:25.580 I'm going to be honest with you.

00:38:26.880 It's safer being a tailor than in some of the schools.

00:38:28.920 Yeah, but you left and you became a comedian.

00:38:30.420 Yeah.

00:38:30.860 Well, so there are some dissonance you were feeling when you were in the school.

00:38:33.200 Probably that your life was too damn predictable.

00:38:35.300 Yes, it was that.

00:38:36.200 But that's what got me really frustrated.

00:38:38.120 And the fact that I had to leave is because, and also the fact was, is that I took a lot

00:38:42.680 of pride in my work and, you know, obviously I made mistakes and whatever else, but I drove

00:38:47.560 myself to be an outstanding teacher, officially graded outstanding in both primary and secondary.

00:38:53.140 All right, stop showing off.

00:38:54.520 And I felt that like there were people who were putting in a quarter of the effort.

00:38:58.520 So you were competitive.

00:38:59.640 Yeah.

00:39:00.200 And is that not a marker of testosterone competition?

00:39:03.400 Yeah.

00:39:03.820 Sure.

00:39:04.300 Yeah.

00:39:04.440 So, so it's not like you went there and you stay there.

00:39:06.440 But again, I think this is all, I'm looking at like studies on this and you asked me a

00:39:11.100 foundational question.

00:39:11.920 I've asked myself that same foundational question.

00:39:13.640 Like what drives people into something that has no predictable outcomes?

00:39:17.160 Because then when you're an entrepreneur, like you said, we were talking before the show,

00:39:19.960 like, yes, you can do the right things, but it doesn't guarantee success.

00:39:23.260 It only improves the opportunity to, to experience it, but there's no promises.

00:39:26.940 One of the things, I actually really love fashion.

00:39:29.860 I find fashion very interesting, particularly when it's, when it's connected to musical movements

00:39:35.300 and particularly with British musical movements, things like punk, ska, you know, things that

00:39:40.640 merge fashion, politics, music.

00:39:43.360 It's, it's, it's a fascinating thing to see.

00:39:45.680 You're very tapped into culture.

00:39:47.360 You have to be with your job.

00:39:49.140 What can you see coming down the pipeline connected to your role and your job, et cetera?

00:39:55.560 Okay.

00:39:55.800 Well, um, I have a book coming out with Michael Franzese.

00:39:58.960 I wanted to quickly plug that in.

00:40:00.520 Part of the book is we actually talk about the evolution of suits, uh, through the decades,

00:40:04.360 like the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, et cetera.

00:40:06.180 So what's interesting to me is the movement of, of suits specifically fashion in general,

00:40:11.920 but suits specifically today is kind of moving towards what suits looked like back in the

00:40:16.060 1950s, which is, which is a, a fuller cut suit, which is a more traditionally conservative

00:40:23.180 suit, not a lot of exuberant details, just very straightforward, fuller cut suits.

00:40:27.680 And the 1950s were an interesting era for that because we were coming out of the forties

00:40:30.980 where things were being rationed.

00:40:32.180 So fabric was difficult to come by.

00:40:33.600 And so, and then we, before that had the thirties where we had opulence, like the thirties

00:40:37.800 were the golden age, you know, that was Clark Gable and, and, you know, Gary Cooper.

00:40:42.000 These were like, these were like the, the golden age of bespoke tailoring kind of thing.

00:40:45.780 Right.

00:40:46.320 And then, and so the fifties were not a reemergence of the opulent thirties, but they were a break

00:40:51.640 away from the restrictive forties.

00:40:53.900 So you want things that are conservative looking, but still fuller cut and more fabric.

00:40:58.880 You know, you can enjoy that now because fabric is no longer being rationed.

00:41:01.720 And now that I look at the 2020s, what's happening with clothing, it's coming back to the 1950s.

00:41:07.060 So I think we're coming out of a re, it's almost like the clothing today is a reemergence

00:41:10.860 from a war, which is interesting.

00:41:12.620 Like we didn't actually have a very big physical war in the West, but we surely had a cultural

00:41:17.240 war.

00:41:17.580 Yeah.

00:41:17.880 And I, and I think there's the same sort of an ethos that the same spirit is running

00:41:21.360 through that.

00:41:22.040 So I do see suits coming back.

00:41:24.300 I see a lot of really cool hats coming back.

00:41:27.240 Like I have a friend who's in the hat business and business is booming.

00:41:30.460 And it's like, when was the last time you saw a guy wear a hat like 10 years ago?

00:41:34.000 So I see a reemergence of what some would consider more conservative fashion.

00:41:39.420 And, but that's, but that's a great point because one thing that I've noticed particularly,

00:41:44.780 and maybe it's me getting more conservative as I get older, is I see people of our generation

00:41:49.540 refusing to embrace a more adult look and still remaining in their twenties fashion.

00:41:57.460 That's enough about me.

00:41:58.700 I think, you know what I think is driving that?

00:42:00.340 I think it's IT being a major employment sector and remote work being a by-product of

00:42:05.400 that.

00:42:06.180 Because, because, you know, you know, Jordan Peterson says it like this too, clothing

00:42:08.880 is not something you just wear for yourself.

00:42:10.360 It's something you wear for others, you know?

00:42:12.280 And so as we are acclimated to working from home, it's like, why would I put on a suit or

00:42:15.840 a jacket at home?

00:42:16.420 And I think, or I don't know, like as, as, as we sort of become a little bit, again,

00:42:22.040 we're becoming cognitively dissonant towards remote work.

00:42:24.500 We're seeing that reemergence again of coming back and meeting people in person.

00:42:28.040 That's something that's going to drive clothing as well, because like, I'm going to get dressed

00:42:31.240 up for you guys in a way that I might not get dressed up for myself if I'm, you know,

00:42:35.100 working at noon at home with my coffee.

00:42:36.780 Do you think there's also something there about youth, the preservation of youth, because

00:42:41.740 in a society that highly values people being young, which wasn't always the case,

00:42:46.280 you know, there were periods in human history when you would have looked at someone young

00:42:50.600 as totally useless and, and, and you would have said, well, you're not really a person

00:42:54.580 until you're in your sixties, right? 0.85

00:42:56.160 Whereas now, you know, the American presidential election was a bit of an exception, but generally

00:43:01.520 speaking, we tend to think of youth as being a good thing.

00:43:04.520 Yeah.

00:43:04.940 I think you're on the right track, but I don't think you're exactly on point.

00:43:07.600 I don't think it's a revoking of aging.

00:43:10.160 I think it's a revoking of personal responsibility, which is exactly what's been happening in the

00:43:15.460 culture because everything the left has been doing is about abdicating personal responsibility.

00:43:19.680 So it's not about, I want to look youthful because I miss being 15 or 18 years old.

00:43:23.920 It's because I don't want to take the responsibility of, of determining my own destiny, which is part

00:43:29.480 of what putting a suit on is.

00:43:31.180 So you're there, you're almost there, but I think it's a cultural thing.

00:43:33.860 That's interesting.

00:43:34.820 Because I really, I love wearing a suit.

00:43:37.580 So as the show has got bigger, we get invited to more, you know, prestigious occasions and

00:43:43.520 constantly went to me, mate, you've, you've got to, you've got to get a suit.

00:43:46.540 And then when you go and buy a nice suit, it changes the way you hold yourself.

00:43:51.920 It changes the way you move through the world and it changes the way you speak.

00:43:55.520 It's a, it's a real thing for men.

00:43:58.160 You're evoking a spirit of people that are greater than you that build great things.

00:44:01.920 Truly, you know, I had this conversation, um, recently where it's like, it was, it was

00:44:07.760 Jordan Peterson.

00:44:08.240 He said, you know, you're wearing a suit for others to show respect.

00:44:10.520 And I said, I think there's a deeper sense there because look at, you know, in mathematics,

00:44:13.860 if you want to have a proof, right, you can prove something is true, but you can also prove

00:44:16.860 the opposite is not true, which proves that something might be true.

00:44:19.460 Right.

00:44:20.140 And so when you look at people that want to destroy society, I mean, I'm really talking about

00:44:24.680 these radical leftist types, imagine what they look like.

00:44:27.060 And you always pictured the same thing, right?

00:44:28.540 Like a, uh, rotund blob with blue hair and piercings, just everything about destructing

00:44:34.140 the self-image in order.

00:44:35.800 Well, from a female perspective, what they're saying is the, if the male, you know, if the 0.72

00:44:40.640 agency you have as a male is finding me sexually attractive, I'm going to make myself super

00:44:45.360 unattractive.

00:44:45.880 So you have absolutely no agency over me whatsoever.

00:44:48.060 It's like, they're destroying their own sexual market value intentionally to show you 1.00

00:44:51.380 that you suck as a man. 1.00

00:44:52.300 That's what's happening. 1.00

00:44:53.180 And so what's the opposite of destroying your personal image is uplifting a personal image.

00:44:57.480 So the opposite of that leftist movement is conservatism, right?

00:45:00.060 Like paying conservatism, conserve the institutions, paying homage to the institutions built before

00:45:04.100 you.

00:45:04.400 So to me, the suit is not only, um, a respect factor.

00:45:08.120 It's also evoking the spirit.

00:45:10.000 Like I'm showing respect to people that came before me that built things that I'm completely

00:45:13.620 incapable of building, which are great things.

00:45:15.340 These things that operate around this in society, they're amazing.

00:45:18.540 And so it's more than just respect.

00:45:20.700 It's a spirit.

00:45:21.320 And, um, very, very quickly, France, you know, like for me, I went to a private school in

00:45:28.240 Vancouver, um, for elementary school, but I didn't belong there.

00:45:32.100 We were immigrants.

00:45:32.800 And so we got like free private school.

00:45:35.080 And so you had all the local, you know, like the kids that grew up in the city and their

00:45:38.680 parents grew up, et cetera.

00:45:39.620 And then you have the weird Russian kids. 1.00

00:45:41.360 And I was from Ukraine and my friends were from Latvia and, you know, in Sarajevo, like

00:45:45.280 from all over sort of the Slavic countries that came to Canada.

00:45:47.500 And my dad, you know, he's, he's an RV technician, like a mechanic at the time, you know, he

00:45:52.740 would take me to school in his 1989 Corolla or Camry, which was, you know, he was getting

00:45:58.180 ready for his overalls, but there was a private school.

00:46:01.040 So all the other kids are being dropped off, you know, when their dad's driving a black 0.99

00:46:04.200 BMW wearing a suit.

00:46:05.300 And I was like, wow, I want to wear a suit.

00:46:08.260 I don't know why, but it made me feel like those men were important.

00:46:12.780 Yeah.

00:46:13.800 And that's what it is, right?

00:46:15.100 It is because when I was a kid, I loved wearing suits.

00:46:18.660 And why is that?

00:46:19.620 It's because you know that what you wear communicates something about you.

00:46:24.340 And if you want to project a sense of power or authority or status, there is nothing that

00:46:30.160 does that better for a man than a well-cut suit.

00:46:33.880 And a status of respect for the institutions around you because they're freaking unbelievable.

00:46:38.600 Like, you know, you guys were saying earlier, like, oh, our camera battery is not working.

00:46:41.800 Like, how does a battery even work?

00:46:43.440 Like somebody had to make that.

00:46:44.540 Like, that's such an important thing for me, right?

00:46:47.380 Like, I'm like, I flew here.

00:46:48.980 How does an airplane fly?

00:46:50.100 Like, somebody had to build that together with many brilliant minds.

00:46:52.820 These are all institutions around us that we get to enjoy.

00:46:55.500 It's that irony, you know, of that kid typing about how he's an anarchist but doing it on

00:47:01.060 an Apple computer.

00:47:02.320 Like, on the greatest thing that's ever been invented that you can hold in your hand,

00:47:05.580 it's incredible.

00:47:06.400 So it's evoking respect.

00:47:07.860 It's evoking a better future.

00:47:09.380 It's also evoking a spirit of greatness.

00:47:10.960 I see it in my kids.

00:47:13.260 I've got two boys.

00:47:14.000 I took my son with me on a business trip to Hong Kong earlier this year.

00:47:17.020 He's eight.

00:47:18.100 And we were, I was doing a lecture at university there about, you know, luxury fashion.

00:47:22.240 And I got my son a suit.

00:47:25.020 You know, an eight-year-old kid puts on a suit and, oh, my God, he lights up.

00:47:28.600 He stands up.

00:47:29.180 He looks at himself and he sees maybe something about his dad and himself.

00:47:33.200 That's a great feeling when you're a kid.

00:47:34.640 Maybe not when you're an adult, but as a kid, that is an incredible feeling.

00:47:39.140 And we always talk about how, and people always say, you know, this is the 1930s.

00:47:44.840 This feels like the 1930s in terms of culture.

00:47:47.780 If we look globally, what's happening, the world becoming more unstable.

00:47:52.840 Do you see that reflected in fashion or not at all?

00:47:57.500 No, 100%.

00:47:58.120 Absolutely it is.

00:47:59.420 You know, the pandemic actually catalyzed that quite a bit because things were moving towards more casual during the pandemic.

00:48:05.940 Because keep in mind, heading into 2020, we were still on this weird timeline, you know, after Harambe died and everybody went nuts.

00:48:12.240 I don't know what set that off.

00:48:13.600 But we got on a weird timeline, right?

00:48:15.360 Like, all of a sudden, inverted ideas started becoming proliferated as a sense.

00:48:19.300 They were completely nonsensical.

00:48:20.820 Men were women. 0.98

00:48:21.740 Women were men. 0.99

00:48:22.620 And, you know, everybody had to be a doctor because of the color of your skin because you can actually, you know, help heal a person.

00:48:27.980 All of a sudden, crazy stuff started happening, right?

00:48:30.100 And as the institutions deteriorated, started our fashion.

00:48:33.100 And then it kind of culminated in the pandemic where everybody was just wearing t-shirts and shorts all the time.

00:48:37.640 So, yes, you had this sort of a war that was emerging on a sort of cultural scale.

00:48:41.380 And you're right.

00:48:42.100 Like, now we've reemerged from that.

00:48:44.320 And as I'm seeing our clients and, you know, we thought, hey, after the pandemic, we'll never sell a suit again.

00:48:49.380 That's completely not true.

00:48:50.580 We're selling more suits than ever.

00:48:51.640 Do you think if you see military iconography styles come into fashion, do you see that as a warning sign for society?

00:49:03.340 I would ask, what is the cause and what is the effect?

00:49:06.820 You know, it's like, okay, well, let's say we're seeing some militaristic styles.

00:49:09.480 Where is that coming from exactly?

00:49:10.840 Like, is that coming from designers or is that coming from where?

00:49:14.100 School uniforms?

00:49:17.340 It's a good point.

00:49:18.420 I don't know where that would come from.

00:49:20.080 Does that make sense?

00:49:20.660 It does.

00:49:21.420 So let me ask you a different question.

00:49:24.020 You mentioned speaking to clients.

00:49:25.340 One of the interesting things I've always found about talking with you is that you have access to lots and lots of people.

00:49:31.420 Now, they're not representative of the population, even remotely.

00:49:35.960 But what you do have, most of your clients are not going to be, you know, public commentators or Jordan Peterson or Constantin Kish or whatever.

00:49:43.980 They're going to be lawyers, bankers, business owners, et cetera.

00:49:47.720 Yeah.

00:49:47.840 So when you see those people and you see thousands of them every year, I imagine, what are you hearing?

00:49:54.780 What's the word on the street or the word in the boardroom, so to speak?

00:49:58.600 What are people saying about, you know, the cultural situation, the political situation, the global situation?

00:50:04.000 Is there some kind of thing that you're picking up?

00:50:06.700 Absolutely.

00:50:07.220 I've been in some really crazy rooms with, you know, lawyers, bankers, politicians.

00:50:10.500 One thing I'm noticing is there's a profound fear amongst the white collar professional class when it comes to stating their true opinion. 0.98

00:50:16.760 Like, it's been, I've had judges, you know, that have been very famous and well-known judges that I've sat down with, you know, and they would, like, kind of say, hey, man, you know, all this stuff that's on my email, the gender pronouns on my email, it's all crap, it's bullshit, but I can't do anything about it. 0.96

00:50:32.360 I used to hear that all the time from my clients.

00:50:33.880 Like, how much they disagreed with what was happening, but for whatever reason, they were so afraid to stick out their neck, so to say, because they were afraid it was going to undermine their, so they built their entire profession on, you know, being part of an institution, and so they would rise up to the institution, and they would just get, like, these golden handcuffs where they couldn't express themselves, and that's something that's made me so thankful about being, you know, let's say, an entrepreneur, and it's also made me understand why governments hate entrepreneurs so much, because they can't control us, you know?

00:51:01.260 So that's probably been the main theme, is that a lot of them really, it's like, you know, the silent Trump thing, like, Trump just crushed this election, everybody's like, oh my god, how did it happen, you know?

00:51:09.640 All these people, you know, in large institutions, like, oh, I'm a lawyer, I can't believe he won, it's like, no, man, like, they all voted for him, but publicly they're saying something else.

00:51:17.780 And is that changing now that the elections happened? Are you having conversations with people where you feel like they're more willing to express themselves?

00:51:25.480 Yeah, people can breathe easier, for sure. As they say, the air feels cheaper to breathe, you know? Yeah, for sure, there's a sigh of relief, because, you know, there's this pressure that's been building up, you know?

00:51:38.380 And, you know, it so annoyed me, like, I would have, like, a guy on my LinkedIn who's like, Bill, who weighs 320 pounds and has a big surly beard, he, him.

00:51:46.000 And I'd be like, thanks, Bill. Like, I was having a hard time. He goes, dude, I don't know, like, they make us do this, blah, blah, blah.

00:51:52.540 And now, all of a sudden, you know, the people that had, whatever, whoever those people were that had the control to, like, to create that or to enforce that, they seem to have lost their power.

00:52:02.580 I don't know how that looks on a, you know, on an individual scale, but I mean, in general. So, I do see people breathing a little bit easier.

00:52:08.500 But, you know, what's interesting is, I used to have an office in Ukraine. We had, like, 50-plus guys working for us and gals working for us in Ukraine.

00:52:14.540 And so, I would go to offices with people that had money in Ukraine, which usually, they weren't, like, the kind of people that have money in the Western world.

00:52:22.340 Like, they just, you never quite know what you're really dealing with. And they would tell you things.

00:52:26.420 And those things they would tell you would completely be the opposite of what you're hearing in the media.

00:52:31.300 Like, a complete inversion, but they're the people that are actually in the media.

00:52:35.660 And you would go, wow, like, so much of our world is built on a facade of a certain, like, sanctimonious promulgation, some preaching of some values.

00:52:44.360 But the people that are behind the scenes on those, they don't necessarily believe those values at all.

00:52:48.360 It really shifted my world being around these people because I learned that I, I mean, this is going to sound crazy.

00:52:52.740 I learned from my job that I can't trust the news.

00:52:56.840 And what it also tells you is that if you are an entrepreneur, the main reason people think it's about building wealth or whatever.

00:53:04.300 And look, of course, it's about being financially independent, but it's not.

00:53:07.580 It's about freedom.

00:53:08.580 100%.

00:53:09.020 You know, because for all of us sitting here, the reality is, for one reason or another, we didn't fit into the normal workplace.

00:53:16.960 And part of the problem is, well, I'm speaking for myself, I'm certainly including everyone else here as well, is an inability to button my mouth.

00:53:24.580 Creative, disagreeable people tend to not do very well at the bottom of hierarchies.

00:53:29.180 And it's a very interesting juxtaposition, right?

00:53:31.440 Because you're creative and disagreeable, which is actually creative means you're basically smart.

00:53:35.340 You know, and disagreeable means, well, you're able to challenge in quotas and all those status quotes. 0.99

00:53:39.440 But you won't take bullshit. 0.97

00:53:40.420 That's really what it is. 0.98

00:53:41.380 Which is good.

00:53:41.400 But you need that.

00:53:42.120 Because if you're a yes man, you know, you're going to get stuck in middle management.

00:53:44.900 You're not going to like it very much.

00:53:46.060 So you're creative, you're disagreeable.

00:53:48.240 But you're also not really competent because you're at the bottom of the hierarchy within your profession. 0.97

00:53:51.660 So any idea you have, as great as it might be, the moment it is a slight outlier from what is known to work, you become like, you become an incompetent thug. 0.77

00:54:00.220 And it's like, well, why are you telling me what to do?

00:54:02.140 You've never actually done it.

00:54:03.120 And it's, you know, and most people that think the system is wrong are going to fail with their own system anyway.

00:54:07.880 So they probably are wrong.

00:54:09.040 So the odds are already against you, right? 0.73

00:54:11.280 So if you're going to be that person, and you guys are certainly those kind of people too, then you better damn succeed at the thing you do. 0.99

00:54:18.540 Because otherwise you're just a disagreeable thug. 0.99

00:54:20.920 Right. 1.00

00:54:21.780 And that's useless.

00:54:22.820 Dimitri, it's been great chatting to you.

00:54:24.480 As you know, the last question we'll always ask is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

00:54:29.280 Oh, boy.

00:54:32.620 Oh, man.

00:54:33.480 There's so many unkosher things I can think of.

00:54:35.440 But how deep do we go?

00:54:38.300 Go for it.

00:54:39.100 Give me a thread, man.

00:54:39.940 Give me something to go on.

00:54:40.780 No, no, no.

00:54:41.720 It's all you.

00:54:42.620 It's free hit.

00:54:45.580 Something that we're not talking about that we should be talking about?

00:54:49.340 Yeah.

00:54:49.740 How we should not let people work in positions in government where they can exercise any authority unless they've built some kind of an institution that's been proven by the free market.

00:55:03.960 That's a fascinating point.

00:55:05.320 Thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:55:06.700 Thank you so much for coming on the show.

TRIGGERnometry - December 25, 2024

Fashion Expert： What Clothes Tell Us About Culture, Politics and War

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