Business Coach : Quality Help
-It’s important that we dress for the role we want to have.
-Yeah.
-Now, Napoleon Hill is a success author I mentioned earlier. He says, “the clothes you wear influence, thereby they form a part of your environment. Soiled by shabby clothes, they depress you and lower your self confidence, while clean and modest and refined clothes give you a sort of inner feeling of courage that causes you to quicken your step as you walk.” What? What’s he talking about here?
-Well, first of all, I absolutely agree with him, and one of things that I’ve talked to my staff about all the time is, you dress how you want to be addressed. A business coach once said that.
-Oh, dress how you want to be–
-Addressed.
-Sick. Awesome. I like that.
-That’s something I love to use with my team members and, especially when you’re a young entrepreneur, there’s going to be people that are going to look at you and say, this guy’s young. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And so there is a way to combat that. You need to take a look at how you’re dressing. There’s a book out there called Dressing For Success, and I read that at a young age, and I literally– I went out and bought– I charged out my credit cards, bought a whole new wardrobe.It is a business coach recommended book.
I walked in there and the guy walked up to me with a tape and said, all right, let’s start this. I said, match me everything, because I’m horrible at matching. My wife says I’m the only guy that can clash a white shirt to a tie, no matter what it is. So he matched me up a whole bunch of clothes, and literally the next day when I got dressed, I felt good about myself. I was walking going, I can take on the world.
-Just look at myself. I love the way that I look when I look at myself.
-Pretty much.
-Now, let me ask you this here. How did you used to dress as a young entrepreneur– or young guy? What were you dressing like back in the day? Back in old school when you were–
-You mean like before I was an entrepreneur?
-Before you read that book, how were you dressing? Well, Chick-fil-A standards were we were supposed to wear a shirt and tie, and I wore a shirt and tie, but the shirt and ties I wore, to be honest, I would go to Walmart and I would buy three shirts for $10, or whatever it may be, and a tie. This was back in the early ’90s.
-Old school.
-And that’s what I would wear, but yet the reality is, once you washed that shirt two or three times, it starts getting a little bit tight around the neck, and I wouldn’t have it pressed, and so I would look at my sleeves and they kind of looked all wrinkly, and it was kind of short, like this, and I thought that was OK, because I was never taught anything different. So then once I read that book, I learned differently.
-Dry cleaners have saved my life.
-Absolutely.
-Do you go to the dry cleaners?
-No, I have them pick it up.
-I used to just kind of iron and [STEAM HISS].
-I’ve burned more clothes.
-Yeah, I’m just burning, like making toasted shirts. Now, how did your shabby appearance back in the day– you know, the appearance when you weren’t dressing that great? How did that affect the opinions of others? Find out what a business coach has to say about appearance
-I think a lot of times they wouldn’t take me seriously, or they would think that maybe this young kid doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t think they were actually thinking, because he can’t dress right, but it was more like Napoleon Hill said. It’s part of your environment. It’s part of Arthur Greeno as a whole. That’s kind of the appearance.
-Back in the day, we had a dude who used to work for us, who just smelled funky, where you’d talk to him and you’re just, you know– I don’t think he was into the breath mint thing and the whole shower thing, and I know he was a good dude, and I remember pulling him aside, and I said hey, hey, hey, you know I love you, right? He was like, yeah. You smell so bad that I can’t even sometimes talk to you, but you know I love you, right? He was like, yeah. And I remember giving him some money to get nice clothes, and I remember just watching him be different.
I remember another young man that used to have big, massive corn rows, and he was trying to get a job in a professional setting, and I talked to him. I said, hey, man, you’ve got to cut the corn rows. Like why? I said, well, I don’t know. There’s just not many presidents I can think of that have corn rows. They used to have wigs back in the day, but I don’t see and corn rows right now. I don’t know of any heads of state, any CEOs that are rocking the corn rows. You’re just going to have to quit the whole smoking thing and quit the corn rows. And it seemed like it was hurtful, but he told me thank you too, and he came back and said, man, it changed my life.
So I’m hoping that right now, as people are watching this, maybe if they’re offended, maybe they’ll actually do something about it, because I know I was told at one point– I met with a mentor of mine, and he pointed I had double hoop earrings, and I was dressing like a wild man, and he was kind of like, you’re dressing like Eminem, and you have double hoop earrings. I wouldn’t do business with you either. And it meant a lot from this guy, because he’s a very successful person and business coach, so I just want to encourage everybody watching this right now to really ask yourself, what kind of first impression are you making?