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011: Antonio Centeno of Real Men Real Style and A Tailored Suit| How to Start and Grow a Men’s Style Business
Hey everybody and welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast episode number 11. This is John Corcoran and in this episode I talk with Antonio Centino who's the founder of a tailored suit in Real Men Real Style. And in this interview we talk about the struggles that Antonio went through creating a custom tailored suit business, how that influenced his offshoot business, Real Men Real Style and how he grew Real Men Real Style to over 300,000 visitors a month within 18 months. Really incredible. So let's get going. Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution podcast, your source for how to grow your small business without working 24/7. Now, now your host for the revolution, John Corcoran. Hey everybody this is John Corcoran and thank you for joining us. I met Antonio Centino at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas earlier this year and he and I just really kind of hit it off. We met at this buffet dinner that was being put on by Pat Flynn who is a kind of a celebrity at the New Media Expo and I just got along with him really well. We really have different backgrounds though. He's originally from Texas. I'm from California. He's a former Marine. I guess once a Marine, I was a Marine. I'm a lawyer. He's got an MBA. I've got a JD. But I think what we had in common is that he's a very dedicated family man. You can tell that that really comes first for him. He served his country very honorably and he's very proud of that and I come from a military background with my father and grandfather both having served in the Air Force and he's also a very giving person and I think that really comes across in his real men, real style and his blog and also his videos that he produces for real men, real style. And so he's a great guy. I really enjoyed talking to him but he also talks a lot very candidly about the struggles that he went through with his first business that he started after going and getting his MBA which was a tailored suit. There was a custom suit business and he actually flew all over the globe to get different style ideas and to find tailors that he would work with in his business and then ultimately found that it was really a struggle to keep going and so he kind of that led him into starting this blog, Real Men Real Style which is just tremendously successful. I don't think he even appreciates the dramatic amount of traffic that he gets to that blog but I think it starts from he produces these great videos where he gives advice on how to dress sharp, how men can dress sharp and it's really helpful stuff and I know I've been influenced by it and we actually so I recorded this a number of weeks ago but since we recorded it he and I have both joined a mastermind group together we meet on a monthly basis but at the time we did this interview act we hadn't joined that yet so I hope you'll enjoy the interview and I also want to just do two quick thank yous to two podcast listeners who have been really loyal and really helpful to me. First is Dave Mesa. Dave is an attorney with the Cedric Law firm in San Francisco. He's a fan of the podcast and he's has given me some good feedback on the show so I really just want to thank him. He's also the president of the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California. He's really a mover and shaker politically and I'm sure he'll probably be mayor of San Francisco one of these days and I also want to thank Mark Gaynor. Mark is the owner of a company called Legal Editions which does legal placement for lawyers and contract attorneys and Mark has also been a big supporter and giving me good feedback as I've grown and changed smart business revolution and so I really just want to thank him publicly for that and I love hearing from listeners so feel free to email me or hit me up on Twitter my Twitter handle is John Corcoran @John Corcoran or send me a message for the contact form at smart business revolution so finally if you like this if you like this episode please go ahead and subscribe through iTunes that way you'll receive future episodes without having to think about it and also hope you'll sign up for my email is smart business revolution.com so we can keep in touch so anyways here is Antonio. Okay welcome everyone this is John Corcoran and I'm very pleased to welcome today Antonio Centino to the call welcome Antonio. Hey thank you John I appreciate it so glad to have you here so I want to take you back a little bit though because right now you seem a little bit like the guys kind of got it all you've got an incredibly popular website you write for the art of manliness which is a very another very popular website you've got a custom men's clovere named a tailored suit which we'll get to in a second you've come a long way you've lived in Europe you've graduated from business school you've been an entrepreneur a writer and you're really really become an authority on men's style but you weren't always this successful you actually grew up I was researching your back and grew up in a trailer park in West Texas very humble beginning so I'd love to hear a little bit more about that your roots coming from West Texas and how it influenced you. Well you know I throw that out there but I don't look at not having money is really you know being poor I look at being poor is refusing to go out there alert and I think you know guys like Carnegie made it possible by putting out libraries and anybody can grab a book one of the biggest accomplishments I remember as a kid was in second grade when we had this thing called the MS Readathon and it we basically had three books we were all raising money for multiple sclerosis and I was raising money and I was getting pledges of every book I would read people would give me one penny or five cents and all the other kids were getting like a dollar now they were only gonna read five books so I took it upon myself I'm like okay I have a month I'm gonna burn through this thing I would like a hundred and thirty books in a month I mean it was just like I was just reading everywhere on the bus almost missed the bus one time you know I'm just but basically I think if you have to drive you can do anything from anywhere you know kind of like that movie Rat the Tooie I just love it you know it's like doesn't matter where you come from you just have to put in your ten thousand hours doesn't matter when you do it how you do it just put in the time and you can make things happen anyone who quotes animated rodent movies on this podcast is cool with me so anyway so something in you though inspired you to read that much even though you know you came from an area that probably wasn't as well educated I don't know what I've only driven through West Texas yeah it's not much there I would say you know it's about finding what you know that you heard a lot find your passion but it's also you know taking action and being consistent and not you know practice doesn't make perfect but perfect practice makes perfect and focusing on you know those little incremental improvements and also you know kind of building a bit of thick skin not you know consistently trying failing trying trying and take you know those little successes you take two steps forward one step back and consistently over time I I find if the you know you didn't mention I was a US Marine so that was we'll get to that biggest we'll get to that biggest accomplishments ever I'm also a father you know those things I look at is very big I mean I can walk away I can declare bankruptcy with my business I think to be a successful father you know that that is one of the most hardest things because you can't declare bankruptcy there if you do which unfortunately some guys just get up and leave I mean you're destroying somebody else's life so right absolutely and that I completely agree with that so you at one point you did move on after graduating college you went to the United States Marines what was that experience like it was amazing one of the best things I've ever done I mean if you look across the military the you know the Air Force is a corporation the Navy is you know about technical knowledge the Army is a military and the Marines are a religion so once you become a Marine it's a religious experience let's just say that but no I loved the respect that Marines have for each other I had the privilege to be an officer of Marines and my job as an officer was to support the guy at the tip of the spear the ground powder I was always impressed that it didn't matter if you were a pilot or a general or if you were a supply Marine we were always working to support the rifleman and all of us were riflemen and you know that the service leader really impressed me I think a lot of companies could learn from that if the guys on top whenever you give orders you need to be in a sense you need to lead from the front you need to be anything you tell somebody to do you need to be willing to do it yourself it's just simply you know we need to be able to scale first of all thank you for your service and secondly one of the things that I talk about with clients all the time is a sense of discipline how did being the Marines make you a more disciplined entrepreneur well you know a discipline is something it's a habit and you need to build it up it's something you've probably read that we've got a limited amount of willpower so it's not something what I love about the Marines is they've got a system that they put you in and it is consistently shown to be able to spit out officers or amazing enlisted men and I was put in that system I saw it work I fought it I was probably one of the kind of an unorthodox Marine officer I wore tie-dye shirts I came from you know kind of a liberal undergrad background I didn't do drugs or anything but but I definitely you know when it comes to the Marine Corps I was not this gung-ho I wasn't gonna drink the Kool-Aid I was always trying to question things in some ways I think it didn't make me the best officer on other hands looking back I felt that it really was a great made my experience greater and to this day you know I can't take the Marine Corps enough for what it did for me and the men and women that I served with I learned so much from what inspired you to join my brother he was a Marine and he served in the first Gulf War my father was in the Army and he had served in Vietnam and picked up a bronze star my grandfather was in the Merchant Marines during World War II many cousins Air Force Army so it just seemed you know there was a family aspect to doing I was the first officer to go off and do that in addition the challenge I you know the Marine they don't get you in with the whole technical thing or they don't promise you money it's like hey you know you they look at you and you know excuse my language but they're like you know you're a pussy you're not good enough to join and they walk away from you and it's like someone throws down that challenge you some guys don't take it other guys are stupid like me and we say hey I could I can do it and so after the Marines you went to business school but did you have an entrepreneurial spark inside of you while you're in the Marines or is that something you cultivated later it was more I would say the entrepreneur in me is more about the freedom I didn't know what I wanted to do but I know I didn't want to have a job that I hated and that's what I saw with my parents they worked factory jobs hourly jobs those were that was the only type of jobs I understood I also felt leaving the Marine Corps that the only options I had were law enforcement such as the FBI CIA they recruit heavily or going to a local you know or working in a factory I mean I didn't really know what my options were so I thought business school would be a good option and it turned out to be a really eye-opening experience what did your parents do what in the factories well my stepdad you know he had had factory jobs he worked for a company well he had many jobs but one of them I remember we actually made trucks for lighting stages but I mean he was the guy shining and cleaning them up and looking for defects I mean it was something my mom worked in an animal control and it was an hourly job and you know she cleaning up you know dealing with dead animals and this stuff all day it's not super exciting work but it was one of those things that they would come home and they you know they didn't want to go to work you know everyone looked forward to the weekends nobody looked forward to having to do the work it's but and oftentimes they had to have two jobs so it didn't you know you did not much free time so you go off to the Marines and then business school and after business school what happens after that where do you go from there I got a great job as a CFO of a manufacturing plant and was promptly fired because I didn't think the company should go one direction they thought it should keep going this other direction they brought me in for change change wasn't going to happen so I found myself without a job I was bringing my family here to the United States I was in Croatia with my wife which sounds kind of sexy and cool vacation but it it's actually very normal for Ukrainians and so I and I met my wife and I was in the Marine Corps and I was bringing her to the United States now like well let's just start a company and I thought there was an opportunity in the men's wear area so I started the company at tailored suit we were in Croatia we checked online I saw maybe two other companies in the entire world doing what we wanted to do and there were no companies in the United States that I could find doing it I'm like okay let's make it happen and we started got the business well I basically sent ten thousand dollars into a company to build me a website that failed technically they delivered what they said they weren't and this is when I learned to be very careful with contracts they delivered everything except for the last point which was a working website it looked great everything was and they of course used all my money so the 10,000 was just on a website yeah wow and so that was and when was this what year this 2007 but you know it's one of those things that you enter on to you enter starting a business and I come from a background in which someone tells me they're gonna do something like it gets done and then that's when you learn very quickly that there's a big difference you know in being able to trust people now I didn't sue them we argued back and forth I was able to get a little bit of the money back but not much and it was one of those things I just moved on and what I did is I had bought Dreamweaver before I left business school and I taught myself how to build a website and I took pieces of what I could salvage from what they built and I built the website myself and I had another guy come in and help me with the cart and we were able to piece it together get it going so that was my first business my online custom cloth you're a tailor to okay so but there was a lot more to the business than just the website right there was actually finding people tailors to do the work so how did you go about finding those people well I realized I couldn't become a tailor so while I had people supposedly building the websites I took two months and I traveled the world I went to the best places in the world for I mean if you want to meet internet up-and-coming internet entrepreneurs you go to Austin, Texas or San Francisco or maybe New York City I mean those are startup communities so the same thing in the tailoring world Michael Porter at Harvard he's talked about clusters so with different cities have different clusters of tailors so Bangkok Hong Kong cowloon specifically in Hong Kong New York City Milan London these cities have enough of a nucleus of tailors and seamstresses that they can perform at a very high level and make what is considered one of the hardest things in clothing which are jackets and shirts and of course trousers and all that so I went to four different cities and had tea with probably two hundred different tailors and I was able to find a number of partners who in a sense would be able to make clothing for me at a tailor suit tested them out many failed I this part I did right but ended up partnering with a we're had two companies that way I can have always fall back on one but one was my main one and that was the the back end so my job was to use the website and to bring in customers basically found tailors who were great at what they did but they couldn't get customers so that was my job and did you have any partners in this business we were high contractors but pretty much my wife was my my partner but at the same time you know we were we're making a family so did you did you bootstrap it entirely or did you have any investors I had people lined up that could have given me money but in 2007 we had this crisis hit and a lot of the the people that I had three investors that lined up two of them immediately backed out because they saw their savings you know people are very risk-averse and one of them is stood by me I've never taken money from but it's been very nice to know that he has my back you know if I needed ten thousand fifty thousand whatever he was there for me so that you know it's pretty important he's got my latest daughter so that's nice so actually that leads to another question I was gonna ask which was you launched this business that was certainly kind of a high-end business looking for a high-end market people would want a custom suit in the midst of this financial meltdown so how did that affect your plans as the business develop well I didn't really affect them because it's one of those things that when you land and you burn the ships you pretty much are gonna keep going forward and I don't think many of us saw the crisis for what it was till 2009 I mean because when you're living in it and you're fighting in it and I would have to say that the men's wear industry actually hasn't been as affected it's something that is actually improved and gotten better so that wasn't and we I you asked a question about financing it one of the smarter things that I learned from Dell computers when I was in business school at Austin is actually used the customer's money to fund your business so everyone's out there looking for funding how about actually charging your customer up front and using that to fund the actual business because it's long you know with the custom item like what I'm building basically I charge them up front because I go out and I immediately them by the fabrics but by having the money up front I am and that was something different in my industry which I didn't really recognize I was doing different but come to find out most people will only you know charge a person halfway but I really made mine more of a product and you had to pay the full amount up front mmm that probably helped dramatically then it helps because as you scale up you don't have to basically you have positive cash flow you're never in a sense being stretched I was the one company that I was fired from I saw firsthand how you can get stretched and that you've got to go get lines of credit from a bank as you do more and more business because basically people are using you as a bank they are ordering from you they're not paying till 30 or 30 to sometimes 90 days out and you are in a sense having to buy all the materials so you're caught in this position of being in the middle I didn't want to have a business they did that yeah very smart so at some point the business evolved though right because you found we've talked about this you found that some of the you were putting content online in videos and and writing articles and you found that that was incredibly popular so tell me about that yeah we I put out content initially because I was wanting to head off questions before I would get them so I was I put together what I thought to be one of the Internet's better sources of information about custom clothing and that started getting a lot of views at first we were getting 10,000 people a month and 20,000 then 40,000 then 80,000 we peaked it probably about a just over 100,000 visitors a unique a month and I was at least it I'm getting all of this traffic now it wasn't turning into a whole lot of sales I mean we were doing okay that we're surviving but you know I was there's something here why are all these people coming to my site for information and I was also fielding phone calls the more phone calls I feel that the more I realized that people were they weren't necessarily gonna buy from me but they were coming to me and trusted me for information so checking out websites like Mixer G rise to the top a few other ones out there I realized that there is a huge need for information and it dawned on me a friend a now a friend I met at blog world named Tim Berkwin his interview actually because I talked with him in the comments and he basically called me an idiot for I told him this I still remember because he went and checked on my website he said you got great information you should charge for it and I couldn't believe that anyone would pay me for information and it really you know it was kind of frustrating I remember telling my wife who's this guy think he is I use information to sell my physical real products and then I realized after a while that you know I had paid a lot of money for my college education and there's really nothing physical about that not to mention the flying around the world for two months as well I mean that that's quite an education yeah and all of I had made thousands of suits designed I mean we so I handle all the design and everything so it was one of those things that it's like wow we have a lot of knowledge here and let's try creating a blog so I at the time this time I was already guest posting at the art of manliness which you mentioned and I knew how Brett was monetizing in different ways so I thought okay well maybe we can put up something let's see how it goes so I started real men real style it was an offshoots and you know Brett was kind enough to link to me from art of manliness I also linked to it from my the traffic I was getting at a tailored suit and I just found that it really shot up and yeah last time I counted we had one of like almost 300 thousand unique last month so wow that side has really grown in the last year year and a half well that's a lot of traffic I wanted to ask you we don't have a lot of time here but I want to ask you kind of about what is at the core of real men real style because I know this from talking to you personally but I know that the real message for you isn't just about and correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth but isn't just about how to dress sharp but it's really about how to make a better life for yourself about taking control and ownership of the image that you project to the world hopefully I'm not putting words into your mouth but can you talk a little about that sure I think an example is probably best so I when I was at the University of Texas I would see incredibly smart people who would have degrees from awesome the best institutes out of India or China or even here in the United States they were a very well spoken they had great body language they took care of their bodies they exercised but when they would go into interviews with companies like Microsoft Apple computers Cisco systems Goldman Sachs their presentation was horrible and I realized how really it was almost a joke I was it was embarrassingly bad and I realized that most men do not have a handle on presenting themselves well so my goal with real men real style is I mean I make clothing but to me clothing is a it's a vehicle it's a medium to really help men be better men and if I can help a programmer present his point to the suits and to get his point across and to be taken more seriously that's a win I don't really care if the programmer wears a suit or if he wears you know what kind of what exactly his style is I want him to I just want him to be able to own the message his presentate his basically his clothing is sending so that he can better present himself to the world so whether guys looking to you know score a date with a girl he's been you know trying to talk to for a year whether he get he nails a job interview those two things to me are you know I I just want be able to help guys understand the science behind style which is one of the things I focus on and I try to make it very simple and understandable I don't like the whole fashion runways it doesn't seem to make sense to guys and I try to break down styles classic timeless as something that immediate something they can just use to send a message without opening their mouths so we talk a little bit about the business model behind a tailored suit and the advantage to that what do you see from business perspective where do you see yourself going with real men real style real men real style is really growing it's one of those things it's be it's going to become bigger than a tailored suit so we were currently running a class right now I had a hundred men over a hundred men sign up for my style system and that is a college level course in which I walk them through in a period of five weeks step by step what they need to learn in the order they need to learn it so that they have a very strong foundation in the basics of style so they can go out there and shop smart and not waste their money that they can go out there and dress rights on the message they want to and be able to better pair clothing understand colors patterns all of that stuff so they're not afraid of it and yeah the college class that for some reason most universities don't even seem to offer you know one of the things that is striking to be about the interviews that you've done and the writing you've done is talking about confidence and the importance that clothing plays for projecting that confidence but I did want to ask a little bit about what advice do you have for people who may be are going through periods of having some kind of self doubt what advice do you have for people is it is it as simple as making sure you always dress sharp or are there any advice for you have for people who struggle with that so a really quick advice for somebody that is really they don't have much confidence would be to start giving compliments to others complimenting others exactly and the reason you want to do this is because of the law of reciprocity people are going to maybe only half maybe only a quarter but if you're giving out 10 to 20 compliments a day genuine compliments people are going to give them back to you at some point and when you start getting those compliments back you're gonna feel really good and maybe you don't see what you're everyone has positive things about them but if maybe you don't see them but other people are gonna find them because the one they're gonna feel that law of reciprocity to give back give a compliment back to you but they're gonna look and they're gonna see and it's gonna build up and it really makes you feel great it's it's a circle but the thing is is you have to start people I think honest and genuine compliments kind of a lost art we feel that we know we don't want to offend we don't want to say a woman looks great you know but you know there's a difference between whistling out there and just you know saying I was when I was at New Media Expo there's a woman next to me very attractive and I just noticed her shoe she had on these like like some type of snakeskin you know shoes with a dress it didn't yeah I could definitely tell she was going for a look there and I complimented her on and just started talking turned out Sarah was the PR manager from military.com and all of a sudden she introduced me to Ward Carroll but the rest of the day she remembered that she's like oh yeah he's the marine that you know isn't the styling you know about my shoes and I like you my favorite pair and I made her feel great and it led to some great things so compliment other people give and you'll receive more than you expect. That's great advice yeah I wasn't expecting that answer and I really liked it so I want to wrap things up here but I know your family is very important to you you have three kids and and your wife and this growing business how do you balance both? I who balance both you have a I think it's important to have a good partner I wouldn't be where I'm out without my wife she picks up a lot of slack and it's also kind of putting it in order realizing that you have to set priorities we could easily work on our businesses 80 to 100 hours a week you have to set the limit and say hey you know yes I could sacrifice it all but your family you don't see an immediate reward from our businesses so in a week you can see a big return you can see money coming in with your kids you're not gonna see that return I mean it's years till you really see and it's gonna go by too fast and too late so you've got to set up I'd buy setting up systems in your life set up times that you protect those times and you spend them with your family and your kids because as you know John they grow up faster than and you can it's incredibly scary how fast they grow and you've got to spend time with them you've got to make time to go play monster downstairs and chase them around the house and take them to the pool just go for go visit them at school and realize that that is the end of the day you know no one has in the tombstone I wish I would have spent more time working on my business yeah there's great message I played hide and seek with my two-year-old son the other day and scared the crap out of him when I came from behind a door so I think monster I'll hold on to her a little bit down the line but great allies there we see my kids like they like hide and seek monster everything is associated with with me being this like like kind of monster that is always slow and of course they can freeze me but and they go from safe spot to safe spot the house but that's fun well thank you so much for joining us and tell us where people can read more about you just do a Google search Antonio Centeno or Real Men Real Style they'll find me okay all right great Antonio really enjoyed talking to you some more and we'll be in touch soon all right talk to later John bye bye thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast with John Corcoran find out more at smart business revolution calm and while you're there sign up for our email list and join the revolution revolution revolution and be listening for the next episode of the smart business revolution podcast