 The Under 21 Convention, Orlando, Florida, 2016, here we're going to learn about something that is super important. A lot of the guys have been talking about our external beliefs, our internal beliefs, but now we're going to learn about our expression through what we wear, how we present ourselves, but not just our clothes, but the philosophy of that, in particular men's style. So who we have today is a pretty amazing guest, I'm very excited and I know you guys are all going to dig this a lot, but we have Tanner Guzzi. Come on stage my man. Thanks. Cool, thanks guys. I am excited to be here and I've really enjoyed what I've heard from the other speakers thus far. This has been a phenomenal conference and I hope you guys, I would imagine, I mean it was fun to kind of walk through and weave my way through and see the notes that you guys have taken and I can see the value that you're getting from it. I know the value that I've gotten from it and I hope that I can contribute to that as well. So before I dive in, I feel like I want to tell you guys a little bit about me because that makes this a little bit easier for all of us. So Tanner Guzzi, I am from Salt Lake City, Utah and there are quite a few questions that immediately pop into your heads as soon as I say that. No it is not the mecca of menswear. Nobody ever really thinks that anyway, right? Yes I'm Mormon, no I do not have multiple wives and yes I did serve one of those missions where you wear black suits and name tags and do all that. So there's that aspect of it, I'll give you a little bit more, I am the oldest child of five, all of my siblings and I are now married, I actually have two kids and one on the way, she is due in August and I'll give you a little bit more info on that as I tell you a little bit more of our history. And I come from what a term that I learned today, I have two parent privilege and I'm extremely grateful that I had two parent privilege and I'm extremely grateful that my wife and I are providing two parent privilege for our kids as well. So that was probably one of the better things that I've already learned thus far today. So a little bit about who I am and I'll give you guys a little bit more as it's relevant to some of this style information. Okay, so one of the things that guys in my corner of the internet, whether that's mens influence or style in general, one of the questions that we often take for granted is why does any of this stuff matter but especially with the style guys, why does style matter? I mean it's just clothing, you know, it's just linen or animal hair or something else that's put on my body and really originally it was just to protect me from the elements. So why does any of this matter? You guys ever thought about it? So one thing that it does do is it helps our brain shortcut and be able to make judgments based on patterns. Now the world will tell us that that's bad, that we shouldn't make those judgment based on those patterns and to a certain extent I agree as long as you're willing to make them and then override them once you're given different information but we can't always assess everything based on its own merit. We have to take those shortcuts, we have to use those patterns and clothing is a huge way to do it. Now in the course of the day I've already had three gentlemen come up and introduce themselves to me and say I knew you were a speaker. Why do you think they knew that? It's because of what I was wearing, right? One of the specific who told me he said you don't roll into a conference looking like you do and not be a guy who's speaking and presenting, right? I haven't done anything else. We hadn't said anything, we hadn't communicated. Sure there's body language and there's presence but even that is either exaggerated or downplayed by the clothing that I choose to wear. So style is a big one and it's one of those things that it helps us facilitate our interaction with the rest of the world. It helps us determine who's in tribe and who's out tribe. It helps us determine the value of what we have. It helps us signal our status. It helps us signal our fertility. It helps us signal all these other traits that we seek as virtuous in other people and it applies just as well to men as it does to women. However there's a big difference between the way that men and women should approach style and this is one of the things that I see a lot because most men have kind of this either negative relationship with their appearance or they just have a neutral one. They assume that as long as I don't look bad then I don't really care how I look and I'll tell you that any guy who says that he doesn't care about his appearance all you have to do to calm on his bluff is say all right come to work tomorrow on a snuggie, a pink one, right? One of those big old blankets with sleeves. No guy's gonna show up to work in that because he's gonna be embarrassed by it and he's not gonna feel comfortable or confident in it and so men we do care about our appearance but mostly we just care about it in this neutral context. As long as I don't look bad then I'm fine. As long as I don't look ridiculous then I'm fine but we miss out on so many opportunities for what our clothing can do for us by not getting into the positive realm of having our appearance do good things for us as opposed to just not doing negative things. Now that jumps into this whole concept of visual appeal versus visual power. As I speak to guys at different conferences as I meet men across the country and even throughout the world one of the things that guys who are new to the world of aesthetics or style tell me is oh yeah my mom used to dress me or my girlfriend buys clothes for me or my wife dresses me. Nine times out of ten I don't need them to tell me that because I can tell because when a woman dresses herself her primary goal is visual appeal. She wants to accentuate the things that are appealing about her. We've learned that that's part of a sexual strategy that's part of accentuating the things that biologically we as men are attracted to in women. The problem is is they take those same goals and then when they apply them to you you end up looking cute and no man should ever look cute. It's not your goal. It doesn't help facilitate what your goals are. It doesn't help accomplish what you want to accomplish. No man should ever look cute. Instead a man should be seeking visual power. All right. It's a subtle difference as far as what's actually accomplished aesthetically but socially it's a huge difference and that's why it's very easy to tell. For me it was pretty easy to tell the difference between those who are speakers or those who run their own businesses. Those who are kind of here to help with the conference versus some of you guys who are brand new here to learn. I don't mean that as a value judgment but it certainly is an observational judgment. It's pretty easy for me to tell because some of you guys look like you just don't care or that at least you care not enough to look bad or that you just at least want to look kind of good in the way that a girl would think you would look good but you don't look powerful. And I'll tell you one of the biggest secrets to dressing well is to not care at all what a woman thinks about the way you dress because if you think about it so much of what your clothing communicates is what your social status is within your tribe. And we'll talk about tribe a little bit further down but the value of men within the tribe is always always always released almost always but mostly always determined by the other men within the tribe. It's not by the women. The women will reinforce that but it's not determined by the women. And the problem that most men have whether it comes to pick up and just trying to define their self worth by how many women they can bed or trying to dress in a way that's attractive to women is that we're allowing our value to be determined rather than be reinforced by a relationship with women. When it should be something that's reinforced by the tribe. For me that's my God that's my country that's my family. Those are other variables but it's your tribe not just who's this hot person and what does she think of me and does she like what I'm wearing. Does that make sense? Okay. So I'm going to show you some ways that we can actually see the difference here. What's your reaction to a photo like this? See a dude putting on makeup right a little bit kind of uncomfortable. Maybe you shouldn't feel uncomfortable because we live in a progressive world and I don't know what to think about this and blah blah blah but viscerally you're just that just doesn't look right right because he's accentuating things that are visually appealing by making his eyes look bigger he looks more innocent he's got soft skin tones it's not indicative of hard work he doesn't look like he's willing to embrace any sort of physical risk there's nothing there about a protector or provider and you see a woman putting makeup on and it looks fine it looks great okay let's take it one step further and you see an older gentleman who's getting a little bit of makeup put on and you see this in the context of okay he's probably a broadcaster maybe he's a politician who's going on national news it's not that big of a deal you can start to see a little bit of the context of it this is kind of a neutral right it's neither good nor bad it's just making sure that things are good alright what do you think about these guys that's makeup right that's a whole ton of makeup but that is a whole different story that they're telling is that appeal or is that power that they're communicating that's power right you think you'd want to go into war against those guys why are there a bunch of pansies wearing makeup right no that's a whole different story that they're telling because of what they're doing with the same objective content that's the power of style that's the power of understanding the difference between visual power and visual appeal these guys are masculine dominant intimidating men as opposed to the guy before that was neutral the one before that who is effeminate so that's one of the big differences alright let's go a little bit further with this what do you think power or appeal appeal okay I would say there are a few things in this that are indicative of appeal you've got all the lacing right he's got the tights on he's got the white gloves he's got the powdered wig the mole this guy does not look like he's ever been anywhere near a day of hard labor right not even close and even then when this was culturally appropriate you think of like the scarlet Pimpernel as kind of the good balance between this refined dandy versus the the rugged individualist who was actually going out and doing things even then this was still kind of a weird way to communicate masculinity but take this similar outfit to the next level what do you think power or appeal yeah but he's wearing lace he's wearing skinny pants he's got a powdered wig on why is it power instead of appeal colors okay go ahead yeah the environment part of it is that you know who he is and what he's done right part of it is that you know the context of what this man has done and the environment in which he finds himself versus this gentleman over here but that's the great thing about style is that it can either reinforce all of these other variables that help you communicate your masculinity the rest of the world or it can provide a contrast to them and downplay it what you want to do especially in a world that doesn't value traditional masculinity especially in a world that tries to tell you there's only one way that you can actually aesthetically express that masculinity is you want to figure out the best way that you can do it and then leverage it as much as you can because of the contrast between you and the sissy limp-risted hipsters of the rest of the world is going to be so much stronger and it's never been easier to dress better than it is now so you can think the baby boomers for ruining the idea of masculine aesthetics right so huge difference between those two how many of you guys have seen this image before right okay a little bit you ever thought about this to me this is the perfect summation of the difference between visual appeal and visual power because you think about it a well-tailored suit doesn't really show a whole lot of skin right it's not showing anything that's actually going to be turning a woman on from an appeal standpoint you have no idea what kind of shape a guy is in I mean yeah you have some general context but you don't know for sure you have no idea about anything from an appeal standpoint but it tells a whole story about his power it tells you about his financial situation tells you about his social status tells you about his social dominance it tells you about his attention to detail on his level of discipline and so it gives you a an entire story and those are the things that women are primarily attracted to and so those are the kinds of things you can signal by dressing well does a well-tailored suit do that absolutely is it the only thing it does it absolutely not otherwise a well-tailored suit objectively across all time and across all cultures would have been the pinnacle of men's style and it certainly hasn't been that's something relatively new and relatively recent so what does this mean for you guys because not everybody needs to show up tomorrow wearing a suit in fact you can't because again that may not be the story that you want to tell that might not be the aesthetic that it's consistent with the kind of man that you are or the kind of man that you aspire to be now there's a book that i just finished reading it's called how will you measure your life and one of the things that the author talks about is the difference between an emergent and a deliberate approach to life and this is one of those things that i uh obviously doing what i do i started thinking about it in a style context and i think that this applies really well so we'll talk about the difference between a developing style versus a deliberate style because one of the things that's so great about being in your 20s is that you don't have to be deliberate about everything right now how many of you guys had an idea of what you wanted to be in your head when you were five years old how many of you guys are anywhere near that path right i'm certainly not in fact as we dive a little bit deeper i'll tell you guys where i was when uh when i was your age and i'm not anywhere near there anymore because i was willing to take a developing approach to my life as opposed to always being deliberate and always having to stick to what it was that i thought i knew now the first thing i'll tell you with this is when you're being when you're taking this developing approach be willing to make mistakes there's a lot of mistakes going on right in here so this is me about five years ago so this is right when i started the site and that's just like a whole vomit mess of me trying a whole bunch of different things right bright blue trousers a dress belt that's old and crappy this awful mustache the stupid target trilogy it's just it's bad and i can look at that now and it's actually kind of one of those things that i even debate about putting up here because in one way i could say well that affects my credibility but it doesn't because i'm willing to take this developing approach to my style and get better and better at it as opposed to having to double down all the time even if i've been proven that i'm wrong on something so don't be afraid to make any mistakes because you will make mistakes and it doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong is is wrong all right so i'll give you a little bit of context about me and then how this worked with my developing style so this is from 1996 this is me right here up on a hike with my family and i can't tell you guys how excited i was to get these air walks holy crap at that age i was just starting to get into the BMX world i was 12 years old i was just starting to really kind of establish myself as someone separate from my parents and so it was becoming this big thing to start to dress in the way that my idols dress and so i got a pair of air walks and i was so thrilled to be able to have these but what's funny is obviously you move beyond that the sad thing is is i have guys with whom i'm friends you know i'm 32 years old now this is 20 years ago i have guys that i'm friends with who still dress this way because they've been stuck in what they were when they decided they wanted to change their appearance when they were 12 years old one of my best friends still looks like he did when we were 12 albeit 20 pounds 40 pounds heavier you know what i mean like it's just a refusal to change and a refusal to develop and grow now i was kind of forced into this because when i was in fourth grade my parents took me and my siblings out of our public school that we were attending and they put us into a private school for me that was something that was really hard primarily because of the uniforms and it wasn't necessarily hard at school with the uniforms but it was hard at home because my friends in the neighborhood the kids that i went to church with they all got to wear whatever they wanted to or they got to wear whatever they wanted to school and i would see them as i was coming home and i would get teased and i would get picked on because i'm this goody two shoes preppy kid who's wearing a uniform you know and so for me that was when i first started to subconsciously realize that just this little subtle thing was communicating that i'm them compared to their us i was now ex-tribe just because of what i was wearing and i started to get treated differently even by these kids parents even though these were people that i had known for years there started to be this differentiation in our church group because we were the rich family which we weren't financially any better off than than anybody else but my parents just wanted us to attend the school and there's this whole thing that this division that started to happen and for me it was all focused on the clothing because that was the easiest way for the other kids to recognize it because they all went to different schools they just all went to different public schools they didn't have to wear uniforms so as you can imagine i wanted to get out of that as quickly as possible we'll turn things forward a few years and i'm still the same guy or i was still the same guy that i was when i was 12 when i was your age this is all i wanted to do i just wanted to professionally ride a bmx bike and so i dressed like that was all that my aspirations were skinny jeans a t-shirt skate shoes that was about it but i wasn't any good at it i wasn't any good at it at all i was terrible i was afraid of falling i was afraid of failing i had friends who they could learn a trick in two hours and it would take me two months to learn it i just never got any good at it and i started to realize finally at the age of 22 which is kind of embarrassing that i'm not going to be a professional bmx rider you know it's like i have to be that far along in my life to realize it's like okay this is not where i'm going so i have to change my path a little bit so i started to think about different things that i wanted to do take different approaches and one of the things that i was doing in between trying to figure out where i wanted to go was i got a job as a bank teller worked for a credit union all of a sudden i had to start wearing a shirt and a tie i made the transition from working as a teller to working and doing loans when i was six months into the job so i was only about 23 at the time 22 23 and it's kind of a weird situation to be in when you're that young because you were approving or denying loans for sometimes people who are twice or three times your age you know there's this inherent authority and power that comes from this position and i started to realize that if i'm wearing the same baggy shirt and the same too wide or too skinny tie that i was comfortable wearing before it started to affect the way that these adults would treat me and so instead i started to dress up a little bit more yeah i got a lot of grief from the other tellers and the other loan officers because it wasn't in the dress code that we needed to wear a jacket in fact i remember our vp of sales showed up one friday it was a casual friday and he was wearing this awful polo shirt and these triple pleated khakis and just looked awful and i'm there in a three-piece suit and he started to give me grief about it which now i understand is more of this just kind of signaling and him feeling threatened by it but people started to treat me a little bit differently and while there was a price for that that came with the way that my co-workers treated me it paid off in spades with my clients or with the people with whom i was actually working so at this point i'm in school i decide that i want to do broadcast journalism i'm a political guy and as i'm sure you can probably imagine i like to talk that's why public speaking this is a high for me as opposed to something i get terrified of and i decide that i want to be the young libertarian version of somebody like limba or glen back and so i decide that i'm going to get a degree in broadcast journalism i go through school i get everything finished and i graduate in 2010 which is right at the bottom of the economic crisis no jobs available to me i'd worked for a radio station for a year i'd been putting in 80-hour weeks between working at the bank going to school and doing weekend overnight shifts with this radio station they didn't have anything for me it just wasn't meant to pan out and so what i decided to do was continue to write and so it was a way for me to to sharpen my voice and hopefully hopefully allow myself to be able to get into a better career from where i wanted to be so i started to write political blogs i started to write a few different things and they got too heavy and so that's when i started masculine style so i start this style blog not really knowing what i'm doing but having spent a lot of time reading blogs in between clients at the bank and i start to create this thing that is now snowballed into something that's so much more so what does all that whole story have to do with style what does that mean to go from the guy on the scape on the on the bmx bike to a guy who last year i was all over a few different men's magazines after attending a show in Florence it's quite the transition right and if you would have told me the little airwalk kid that my career and the something the thing that i was going to be most fulfilled by would not have had anything to do with biking or punk music but would have had to do with clothing especially suiting like dressed up clothing i would have said no way but because i took a developing approach and made each one of those transitions throughout my career then i was able to get somewhere where now i can look back and see all the things that i wanted to be fulfilled by a professional career as a bmx biker or in a music or in a band are fulfilled by what i get to do now so i haven't betrayed any of those core principles i've just found a better manifestation for them as i've grown now what you'll notice is that if we go backwards my style is grown with that right it's all just a little bit different as far as how i dress and i didn't go from that i didn't turn into that from an immediate start with being the little kid wearing the the too tall ankle saw or the tube socks and the airwalks it was a transition it was a developing approach and that's the thing that you guys need to be able to do is understand that it's okay to take a developing approach in fact that's the right way to do it because one of the things that people will do as you start to dress better is they will treat you differently that's one of the biggest strengths and the biggest weaknesses of changing your style because it's the easiest thing to do if you want to start a new chapter of your life you can go to the mall you can pick up a few outfits for a couple hundred bucks and you can be an entirely different person to a stranger than you were the day before but the people who you know are going to resent that because one of the things we value most as people is consistency we value it in ourselves and we certainly value it in others we're threatened by change we're threatened by inconsistency and we almost always treat it like it's hypocrisy as opposed to growth and so a lot of times it ends up being more detrimental than positive for you guys to make a too quick change into something that's an aspiration of yours even if it's an aesthetic aspiration that's why it's oftentimes a lot better to do it gradually one step at a time I have a brother-in-law who we went and did man this was probably four years ago we went out and did a whole day kind of helping him get some new clothes and it was something that was different completely different than anything you'd been wearing before and what it did is it told a different story told a different story to his family to his friends to all these different people and it put him in a pretty unique and a pretty tough position and it'll do the same thing for you if you're if you're up for it then it's a good thing to do and to do it quickly and more drastically if you're not up for it then you're better off doing it more gradually and more slowly because what it did is it raised the level of expectations that not only everybody else had for him but the level of expectations that he had for himself so if those expectations rise and you can use that as a catalyst for other much more important aspects of self-improvement because as important as this is this isn't super this isn't integrity this isn't your moral compass this isn't your your relationship with your family this can just facilitate this but if you can handle a drastic change in the way that people treat you differently because your expectations are raised when you start to dress better make a drastic change and live up to those expectations and my brother-in-law wasn't quite ready for that and so he started to fall back to the way that he used to dress because he was comfortable with the way people treated him based on the way that he used to dress so if you're not quite at that point and you know that you still want to improve which you wouldn't be here if you didn't want to improve then just do it gradually do it step by step and take that developing approach and then at the point when you start to figure out what you want to do that's when you flip the switch and you go into a deliberate approach now i know what i want to do for a career i've known that for three and a half years and i've been able to double down i don't have to think about what would happen if i were in a different company or if i were in a different industry or if i were doing something different because now i know where i am and what i want to do i can take a deliberate approach and i can double down on it and the same thing happens with your appearance once you know the general direction in which you want to head then you can double down you can start to get more deliberate and that's when you can really really start to dress well so how do you do that how do you figure out what you want to do and how you want to dress because it's not just a matter of find something that fits if you're a big guy wear vertical stripes or if you're a skinny guy wear horizontal stripes it's not just about the rules because again there are very few things that are actually objective about aesthetics what's up 21 university i hope you guys are enjoying this presentation i know i certainly had a blast giving it at the under 21 convention and i know that in this there is a lot of philosophical and strategic stuff and a lot of times what you need to get the ball rolling to start dressing better is some actionable advice you need to know the things that should be in your wardrobe the basics or maybe how you should dress according to your body like the patterns or colors or things like that that you want to wear so if you want to know some of that stuff i've got a program for you it's called dress like a man i've got a link for you here go check it out because i have a special discount for you guys as 21 university members i'm excited to see how you guys do and to see you start dressing more intentionally the big thing find your tribe okay who are the people that you want to spend your time with this has been referenced a few times in here but who are your top five who are the people that you want to actually be defined by who are the people that you want to aspire to be like what do they dress like what do they look like because every single tribe has a very different appearance i mean take something as simple as high school sports what's the difference between my high school and the high school up the street geographic location i mean really that's about it you know it's similar socioeconomic status it's similar racial makeup it's pretty dang similar we just happen to live in different neighborhoods but all of that is very much exaggerated by the fact that they have a different mascot they wear different colors in their uniforms and they do things differently that make them a different tribe and so much of that tribe is signaled by what it is that they're wearing think about your experience in high school the kids that all grouped together did they all look the same was it really pretty easy to tell the difference between the guys who played football versus the guys who were out in the back getting high how about the difference between the guys who were playing dungeons and dragons versus the guys who were i don't know playing lacrosse pretty easy to tell right and how do you tell that by the clothing that they wear that's how you signal to the guys who are in your tribe that yes i am part of your tribe and to the guys who are not that no i don't want anything to do with you you're not part of my tribe and so if you want to know how to dress don't start with how to dress start with who you want to be and then find out the way that the men that that live that way find out how they dress and aspire to be like them aesthetically and use that as a way to catalyze your desire to be like them in other more important ways as well so i'll show you how this works for me especially because tribe is something that is not just you the beauty of tribe is that it's bigger than you so i have three main tribes by which i define myself the first is my church this is jose smith he's the founder of the church the second is my family so it's me my wife my daughter and son we've got the third on the way and the third is the company that i'm part of it's called becket and rob we do custom suits and these two uh these two other guys are the founders these are my three main tribes when i do something when i do anything i don't just represent myself i represent these groups your opinion of my family is already being determined by the amount of time that i have spent talking to you today your opinion of the company i represent your opinion of the church that i'm part of these are things that are determined if you haven't had exposure to anything else by what i do and by how i represent my tribe now for a lot of guys especially for young guys that's how it was for me that's terrifying it's a lot of responsibility but men are designed to thrive under responsibility that's what we're supposed to do is shoulder that responsibility and use it as a way to improve ourselves and so one of the big benefits of tribe is not only does it bigger than me and i get the benefits of that as far as i'm protected or i'm represented but it's bigger than me and that i have to be bigger and better than i would be if i were just left to my own devices that's why family is so important that's why country is so important that's why even a group like this is so important because you guys already feel more of a kinship with each other especially if you've had the opportunity to talk to each other in between breaks then you would have beforehand this is already starting to become a tribe and if you don't have one i would say look to each other look to each other as a way to form that but that's a big aspect so how do you find your tribe right we just have to keep diving deeper and deeper into this can you imagine if you were to wake up after being knocked out and you were in a raft in the middle of the ocean and that's your only view what do you do what direction do you head what difference does it make right you don't even know what's the difference between swimming this way or that way or any other way it's all just blue ocean there's nothing to look at right there's no difference whatsoever and a lot of times for a lot of guys that's how it feels when i tell them well yeah let's just start dressing better okay well what does that mean do i have to wear a suit like you do does that mean that i do like the streetwear thing and i buy a bunch of jordans or you know i have to dress like a motorcycle like what what does that mean you know there's so many different directions and so many different choices that most guys don't even know what to do with it okay is it a little bit easier if you have a few different islands to swim to what if you are right there in the middle it's easier right but how do you know which island to swim towards what if somebody told you that you would be happier at this island than at this one or maybe at that one well then yeah that makes it easy but at least you're narrowing it down and getting it even easier to do what you need to do as far as getting yourself taken care of and taking advantage of that growth okay so that's all a tee up to the fact that i have three different islands i can help you guys swim towards okay i've defined these as the three masculine style archetypes and i'll help you guys understand what these are so that you can use them as a way to not only find your tribe but develop your aesthetic and again these are all ways to just catalyze your desire for growth in more important areas so the first of these is the rugged archetype now as soon as i say the word rugged you probably already know what i'm thinking about a rugged man is someone who is defined by his relationship with the physical world these are guys who bend nature to their will these are the guys who are the lumberjacks and the cowboys they're the iron workers and they're the rugged individualists a rugged guy is someone who is capable of fitting the old school traditionally american definition of masculinity now if you've fallen this way there's definitely an aesthetic that goes with it i do not represent that aesthetic at all right bravo represents that aesthetic very well very good representation of the rugged aesthetic okay let's say that you don't fall into that let's say that you are someone who is better defined by your relationship within the social or even the financial world that's the refined aesthetic these men are men who shape the world in their image based on their relationships with other people based on their relationships with society based on what they're able to do financially and through social status and through civilization okay the refined guys are the guys who are the bankers or the nine to fivers to even some extent these are the guys who are the media moguls and the men who helped build the entire western world that we even live in okay again very much an aesthetic that goes with that but let's say that you don't fall in with either one of those the third one is rakish so we've got rugged refined and rakish now the rakish archetype the rakish man is defined by his rebellion he's the kind of guy who likes to break the rules he's the guy who likes to my mother-in-law calls it throw rocks at squirrels he just likes to get a reaction out of people you know what i mean the rakish guy just loves to be a little bit a little bit dark triad even though it's not necessarily super mochi rebellion he's the kind of guy who and he certainly could be but the moral rake is someone who just likes to break the rules a little bit he's defined by being a rebel he's defined by going against the grain and he's happy to take on that social risk and feel like he's on his own as opposed to having to follow the way that the rest of the world works now if you want to know where you fall within that because that's the biggest thing is knowing which one of those three islands to swim towards once you find that then you can start to double down even more because there are sub tribes even within there you can start to find who the men are that fit within that archetype and then you can start to build yourself that way what's fun is when you realize that you actually have an element of all three and then you start to play with them a little bit i'm kind of a mix of refined and rake which is why i'm wearing a sport coat even though it's stupid hot under these lights and but it's bright yellow right like i'm not wearing this if i'm going to a board meeting in new york city but i'm certainly going to wear this for an event like this or if i'm at a men's show in florence italy because it for me it's the right balance of who i am who my audience is who my tribe is and how all those things work together that's why i can wear something like this and feel comfortable in it and look confident in it because i am using this clothing as a way to externally express what i want you to know and respect about me and what i know and respect about myself if you know all this if you have the understanding of the philosophy behind your clothing if you understand the approach of power versus appeal you understand where you fall within those archetypes then you're no longer being worn by your clothing it's no longer just a neutral and you certainly don't ever look cute what you do is you convey a sense of power you convey a sense of confidence and a sense of charisma that people will pick up on before a word ever crosses your lips before eye contact is ever made or before they ever know anything else about you and again it can either boy up and exaggerate the things that are communicated through your posture and your body language or it can work to contrast it but i'll tell you that when you have your style down pat and you know that it's perfectly communicating what you want it to you can't help but stand a little bit taller you can't help but project your voice a little bit better to hold deeper eye contact because you feel like you're actually expressing your genuine self to the rest of the world and it makes you feel bulletproof it's pretty cool so if you want to know where you fall within those three archetypes i've got a little quiz seven questions it's really easy it's really different especially because most guys when they think of style they don't necessarily think of what do i do with you know what i rather live in the 1920s or ancient Greece or what i rather work on an oil rig or in a law firm but those are the kind of questions that i ask and i use those to help you guys understand what it is that you should actually be aspiring to when it comes to your aesthetics and this is where you can check out my social stuff i've left quite a bit of time but it's because i usually get a lot of q and a when we go through this so i will call it that and then open it up for questions so thank you guys for your time yeah go say that again go back to slide yeah oh yeah all right guys who's got questions because i know those come up so say you know after the quiz what archetype you want to follow what are some good resources that you can model those people and kind of get a sense of what outfits to wear by um i give you some of that within the answer on the quiz itself but the biggest thing is to try to understand even just kind of in broader strokes who those people are a lot of it for me even comes down to media you know if i'm the refined guy um i will watch bond movies even old bond movies you'll watch something like down to nabby or something else where you can kind of stereotypically assume that that's where what fits that archetype and then from there you can start to dive in even further a lot of it again comes down to even paying attention to what the men who you would consider to be a hero as far as in other aspects the way that they are with their business or with uh with women in their life or anything else that you're aspiring to see if you can figure out where they fit within those archetypal ratios it's kind of like the oodaloop where you just observe and then you orient and you go through there and then that way it helps you get to where you're used to seeing it and then you can start to see what you emulate what you want to emulate and then you can abandon what you don't want to make sense okay cool um with so much of your following being online obviously um your style and everything is exaggerated because people don't have that opportunity to connect with you in person so is that something you're very mindful of with your fault like online and on your various platforms is that something you think about that's that's a great question let me just reiterate it to make sure i understand what you're saying um is my style exaggerated because i am aware of my presence being online and uh do i use that as a way to kind of leverage what it is that i'm trying to do yeah okay that's a good question um i think it's kind of a chicken and egg scenario because i genuinely like this stuff you know you you can scroll through my instagram feed and it's just a bunch of menswear dudes because i genuinely like figuring out how to make the jacket or the shoulder on a jacket fall better or how to get the difference between a good Blake welt versus a good year flex weld on a pair of shoes or something to that effect and so i genuinely do kind of geek out about this but part of it too is that i absolutely understand that i'm representing a brand or representing masculine style when i'm doing things too so much of this is even more so the case because i'm in salt lake city which like i said before is not really known for its menswear you know i wear something like this here and i get attention for it and i've learned that in most parts of the world the way that i dress is something that draws attention but that's even more so the case when i'm at home and i have chosen to kind of embrace that pressure i like it because it makes me understand that i'm always representing my three tribes and so i like that it's a little bit more exaggerated because then i am always conscious about whether or not i'm representing those tribes well so if you if you like the pressure of it if you're fine and having that kind of attention put on you go for it i would say even go more a little more exaggerated than you would otherwise yeah good evening um you talk about uh three different um styles and approaches to um how we're supposed to dress um what are some items uh which would meld all three styles which you would recommend to keep in a mens wardrobe that is another good question and not to shill my stuff because i do have this as a product it's the 30 staples and it's something that you can pick up on the site but there are there are some things that irrespective of your archetype every man should have in his wardrobe especially because they either kind of transcend those or because at some point in your life you're going to need them and so for the most part those are things like a simple navy or a gray suit a good pair of dark jeans um a solid t-shirt a good uh leather jacket a good oxford cloth button-down shirt a good pair of work boots and a few others that they all kind of fall within the three archetypes and then they irrespective of where you are as long as you're in western culture they will always look good and you'll always just look like you're dialed yeah so i want to address this from a cost aspect i went to mens warehouse one time and i wound up paying about a thousand bucks for one outfit and i feel like that was completely ridiculous um i think the general correlation is that dressing well costs money where is there a you know what's a happy medium there does it i guess what i'm asking is if if you go to bell's or you know an easy store like that can you still make yourself look good yes yeah no it's a great question um the big thing that it comes down to is the value in it and i'll tell you that guys who are in a developing stage in your style shop at h&m shop at forever 21 shop at target don't spend a lot of money because you're going to go through stuff quickly because you may not like it and don't hesitate to try on things that make you a little bit uncomfortable um and don't worry about the cost because you can get stuff for for pretty dang cheap and so there are certainly ways to shop cheap at the same time once you know what your style is and you start to double down on it you really start to get good at it or when you're buying those staples then it's worth the value to invest in quality things and most men i feel like kind of reject that where you know i have guys who they will spend 50 grand on a boat and 60 grand on a truck to tow it and they will spend x dollars in insurance and everything else for wake board gear and all these other things but they'll come into my shop and say yeah a thousand bucks for a suit man i just can't afford that it's like well of course you can you just don't understand the value in it i'm not saying that you personally don't understand the value in it but most then most men don't understand the value in our clothing and that's because we're not good at it if you're good at it then it's not that big of a deal to wear a pair of shoes that cost 600 dollars because i know that these will last me for 30 years i'll give them to my son i may have to re-sold the shoes versus buying a cheap pair from Aldo and having to replace them every two years one because they're crap and two because the style isn't going to be consistent it's not going to last that long so i would say take the cheap approach in your 20s one because of the financial situation that most you guys are in and two because you're in that developing stage in your style but don't stick there see the value in your clothing and see the value that's communicated by investing in quality clothing once you understand what it is that you want to wear and and you're doubling down on it does that answer your question okay cool hey how you doing um i'm just curious is there any way that you can possibly buy an amount like for example five pants five shirts five jackets and carry on mixing them over and over so that you how many times can you mix that outfit that is a great question because i have a very very very limited cupboard space uh-huh i live in a boat so i've got the cupboard and that's it yes okay i've got t-shirts then i've got jeans and then three pairs of shoes and i'm done i love it no i love it that's a fun challenge and that's i think for most men we don't want a wardrobe that rivals our wives we just have no interest in that you know i'm kind of i understand that i'm unique and that i like shoes i like clothes i like owning a lot but most men don't and i don't think that that's that's unique or an anomaly the best thing to do is focus on simplicity and how that works with versatility i can't wear a jacket like this more than once a month because then it becomes pretty obvious that i've got a limited wardrobe and i'm on repeat if i have a blue suit or a gray suit now i mean think about like don draper and madman how many suits is he own i don't know he's always just wearing the same gray suit you know it's not the same gray suit because the dude makes a ton of money but you're not really focusing on that particular item you're just focusing on the man who's wearing the clothing and ultimately unless you fall within the rake archetype that's what you want you don't want people to see your clothing they don't want to think wow that's a great looking suit you want them to think wow you look great in that suit if that difference makes sense and so by focusing on simplicity by focusing on fit by focusing on a color range that's usually between white gray and blue and then by focusing on solids as opposed to patterns then that's when you can maximize on all that versatility you can start to mix and match different things and so it looks like you're getting a whole bunch of different outfits out of limited pieces as opposed to everything being used as just a one-off yeah so does that answer that okay um what's the best way to find out what style is right for you like what factors uh should one look at himself and say hmm is it like music or it's a good question um because it's not necessarily yeah it's I would have answered 10 years ago that it's music and that is one of the questions that I ask my clients I don't do a whole lot of coaching anymore but when I do I ask them things like are you consider yourselves to be an introvert or an extrovert what kind of music do you listen to what's your ideal night out what's your ideal career what are your aspirations what are your own personal limitations I don't think there's one golden question but it's being able to understand yourself well enough that you're willing to incorporate all of those aspects and then see your clothing as a way that can help you overcome the things that you don't like yourself and then get better at the things that you want to improve on because again it's so important to understand that clothing is just a tool it's just a means to an end if you define yourself by your clothing that's your job is to define me by my clothing that's not my job it's my job to define myself first and then use my clothing as a way to communicate that to the rest of you and so the better the better way to look at it is how do I want to be as a man what are all my aspirations who are other men that fit those aspirations and that's again part of that tribe aspect and then how do those guys dress do I do they all dress the same okay that's easy then I'll dress like them do they all dress a little bit differently okay well then how do I blend those different elements and that's where you take that developing approach and experiment with different things see what you like see what other people respond positively to as opposed to negatively to and then once you figure out what works double down on it yeah make sense okay cool Tanner thanks for coming out first off from Salt Lake City that's pretty far away so kind of from like a practical standpoint I really enjoyed the part where you talked you showed pictures of you know 17th century men versus like George Washington they're kind of wearing the same thing and but one they're from a clothing aspect what specifically makes a an outfit look clothing like powerful as a pair to not I think someone could wear the same thing you're wearing and not look powerful if they didn't put together right from a practical standpoint right could you like you know sort of like a few guidelines on that absolutely let me go back to that slide because there are a few things at play here that make this work okay so one is the power of contrast you guys heard of the contrast principle it's one of those things that influencers and marketers use a lot if you're interested in understanding this there's kind of a fun study that you can do by yourself fill up three buckets with water one with lukewarm kind of room temperature water one with really hot one with really cold you put one hand in each of the more extremes and then you put them both in the same bucket of water and they're both going to feel very different even though they're both in the same environment the one that was in the hot is going to feel cold and then vice versa it's the contrast principle the same thing as it play with your style now if you think about this so much of washington's aesthetic here is incredibly refined it's very dandy it's very dainty right it's got the powdered wig he's got the he's got the lace up there same thing with down into sleeves it's a skinnier fit but then we've got the things that we traditionally associate with the military he's got the epaulets up here he's got the taller collar which visually puts all this weight up here to shoulders and so it gives him more of that masculine v shape that we're after we understand the context of where he is that it's a little bit more rugged of an environment and then you also know just based on your own historical context of the fact that he's a soldier in the field that the texture of the clothing in this is going to be much rougher and much more durable than something like this this is going to be silk versus this may be something like a waxed a wax cotton or a really heavy wool or something to that effect and so even though the silhouette and the outline or some of the details are still very similar in the rugged environment versus the refined you've got these more rugged elements along with him being injected in the rugged environment itself that provides that contrast principle and that's what to me makes him look even more powerful than some of the guys who are completely dressed down and i think that's one of the reasons why historically officers had that balance of being refined and being set apart because they are in this environment but they're not defined by it like the regular foot soldiers are does that make sense yeah and so you use the the social principles along with the natural principles as a way to create an aesthetic that communicates so much presence and so much power that in this kind of environment it doesn't work right okay cool who's next awesome stuff guys it's all time we have good stuff for you