How to Get a Million Subscribers with Antonio Centeno [Tactics in a Tesla]

- Like this auto pilot we're doing right now.

- So if it doesn't make this turn,

it's gonna get a thumb's down.

Just letting you know.

- We'll probably have other things to deal with

if that is the case.

(phone ringing)

Oh jeez.

- Hey, Pat.

- Yo, what's up, Antonio?

How are you, man?

- I'm good, man.

It's a little bit cool out here.

I thought San Diego would be warmer.

- I know, I'm sorry.

You wanna go on a car ride,

I'll warm you up a little bit?

- [Antonio] Yeah, that'd be awesome, man.

Can you come pick me up?

- Yeah, I'll come get you right now.

Thanks, man.

- [Antonio] Cool, cool.

- Bye.

(laughing)

- Oh wow.

- What's up, man?

- This is a cool car.

- Dude.

Glad you're here, bro.

- Yeah, thanks for having me.

Good to see ya.

- We're just gonna go on a little drive.

- Okay.

- You cool?

- Yeah, I'm putting my seatbelt on.

- Yes, let's do that.

But Antonio, I just wanted to thank you first of all.

You've helped me out so much.

And I know you know this 'cause I've told you before but

there's a reason why I dress this way,

and I've gotten so many compliments about how I dress.

- You have won like contests, haven't you?

As the best dressed guy?

- Yeah, I have, and it's all because of you.

You taught me why I needed to dress up.

I started speaking in 2011,

you sent me an email, you're like

Pat, I shot this video for you.

And it was like 20 minutes long, you remember this.

- Yep, yep.

- And you taught me some basic knowledge

that was so transformational for me

about style and why I needed to--

- I think the key point was, like you said, the why.

Because I talked about you

were in the Berkeley Band, correct?

- Yeah.

- And when you walked out on that field wearing your uniform

did anyone question why you're there, who you were?

- No.

- No.

And it's the same thing in life.

If you wanna be successful, you wanna do something amazing,

you need to start looking like that amazing person,

and so many people, it's foreign to them,

because we live in a culture that doesn't push that,

that says, you know, a book shouldn't

be judged by its cover, but it is.

And I just want guys, men in particular,

but I think, I have so many women

follow my channel as well,

because I want them just to understand

it's about the message you're sending

and just control the message, whatever it may be.

- And your channel's blown up.

I mean how many subscribers do you have now on YouTube?

- We're well past 1.7 million.

- So did you actually receive a gold play button?

- Oh yeah.

- Oh, that's so cool.

- You haven't gotten one yet?

Or you're on your way, right?

- I'm close to 100,000.

So we'll get there.

- Yep.

- I'm getting the silver one.

But dude, I'm so happy about this

because you're teaching so much stuff that

they don't teach you in school.

And the craziest part, Antonio, is like

you taught me how to dress,

I bought some, invested in some nice clothes.

And I immediately just felt more confident.

- And that comes, you know,

out of Northwestern University they talk about this,

it's called enclothed cognition.

And it's the idea that the clothing that we wear

doesn't just affect how others perceive us

but how we perceive ourselves.

And the classic study is basically

they put these guys in doctor's jackets,

they told 'em they were doctor's jackets,

and they performed statistically higher

on exams when they thought they

were wearing a doctor's jacket.

If you think about it, it applies to sports.

Guys love their lucky hats,

they love their lucky, guys, lucky jock straps,

whatever it may be.

And they're very careful with these things.

And it does have a measurable effect on their performance.

- How did you get started on all this?

Like why did you start this channel?

How did you get into fashion?

- So I had a clothier, and it was not getting any business.

And I had to figure out a way

how to get business to the clothier

and I figured out information marketing,

or at least I liked creating content.

So I was trying to get all these visitors

to my little website, to my clothier out in Wisconsin.

And Brett McKay over at the Art of Manliness picked me up.

He said, "Hey, you're a good writer."

So I started writing for him.

And he showed me the power of information marketing.

And I just saw what he was doing I'm like,

well, how bout I do it via video,

and there was this other guy doing it

and I'm like I can do it better than him.

Turns out now he's one of my

best friends and business partners.

- Oh really.

- Just realized that there's a huge open,

a blue ocean out there,

to be able to go in and just create this content.

And I love the impact it has.

And that's probably the thing that keeps me going.

Like money's nice, we've had

great success with the business,

I closed my clothier, and I actually

went into bankruptcy with it, it was that bad.

- Oh wow.

- But what I was able to do

is to take that loss and that failure

and say you know what I'm really good at

is creating this content.

So we focused in on video, because I found it was,

it was very light for me.

You know John Dumas talks about this.

How do what's light.

For him it's podcasting.

For me it's video.

I don't mind getting up in front

of the camera nowadays and talking.

- Was that always the case.

- Pretty much.

I hated typing.

I wrote about hundred articles

for the Art of Manliness, for other blogs,

for my own blogs, but I can't type.

I literally, I'm a, you know, I do it with two fingers.

So I'm like well the video I can just talk all day.

And it was so easy.

And now I've got a team of writers.

I tape my videos, they create articles from them,

they create podcasts from them,

and they create infographics from them.

And, yeah, so one video I can

create like 10 pieces of content.

- Tell me more about that.

Like, give me an example.

- So an example is like I film a video let's say on

what not to wear, if you're wear this

you're gonna get your butt kicked.

You talked about--

- I mentioned the other day, yeah.

- So we start off with stolen valor,

and from that I can create an infographic,

'cause there are five points that I talk about.

Five things not to wear.

So I can create an infographic

and then we can slice and dice that infographic,

create small pictures for Instagram,

which are part one of four, part two of four,

part three of four, I can then, that video,

we then cut it down to 15 seconds, 30 seconds,

and maybe two minutes, 'cause normally my videos

are about five to ten minutes.

And then so we've got all these smaller videos

which I can post all over Facebook,

I can also do a transcription, I can do a show notes,

and then we can create detailed articles.

And so from there, 10 pieces of content right there.

- From one video.

- From one video.

- How do you decide to do that video?

- I go in and I look at what' trending.

I have a Facebook group with about 50,000 members,

I don't do any advertising.

I use that group solely for research.

I also go out there and I look at

what others creators are making that's actually doing well,

and then I've got my guiding principles

of what I wanna stand for, what's important to me.

And I make sure that those are all aligned

so I'm not gonna create something that

yes may be trending, but I think

is not gonna provide any value to my audience.

And put all those factors together,

I try to create something that will do well traffic wise

that again is aligned with my principles,

and is also gonna possibly be something we could monetize.

So you don't wanna, you know, there are certain topics

which just won't make money,

other topics which could get you banned on YouTube,

so you gotta be careful with hitting certain things.

But the principles for me are very key.

When you get into business, you need to know

what you're gonna stand for,

what you're not gonna stand for,

and I know that there's just certain people

I don't wanna work with.

If they're gonna be difficult,

if they don't have the same values.

And everyone's got slightly different values.

But for me, I always look at

I've got a 13 year old son, I've got three daughters,

and they're gonna watch my content some day.

And everything I put out needs to be,

you can't bash a certain sex,

you can't go off and really, I'm not for shock content.

I'm not gonna do pranks, 'cause that stuff isn't me.

- Even those things are working on the platforms.

- And even though they'll get millions of views,

it's just I don't want any drama.

There's enough drama.

Everything is positive.

Again, talking with John, I said,

you know I really stopped listening to his podcast

'cause it was a little bit too simple

or a little bit too early,

and I wanted more, you know, a little bit higher end stuff,

higher level education.

He's like, "Well that's perfect."

And really a lot of people that listen to John

it's about motivation, it's inspiration.

And I realized in my ways that's what my channel's about,

because we never talk down.

We're always like that person

that maybe's at a higher level where you reach down

and just lift people up.

- Yeah.

I love that.

And you mentioned monetization and building a business

out of teaching this stuff.

What does that look like actually?

- So now for us, advertising is very big,

and I've got my guys over at MENfluential Media

which was another business we created out of this one,

but they basically handle all of her leads

because we reach so many people.

A video we put out within 24 hours

will get anywhere from 30,000 to sometimes 50,000 people,

and then over the period of a year,

could get millions of views.

So advertisers wanna get into that content.

We work from shoe companies to high end,

$50 toothbrushes, which is like,

oh, well who would spend 50 bucks on a toothbrush,

but then you explain, well you're going to the dentist,

and if you're not brushing correctly,

you're gonna spend $5,000 to get those teeth replaced

or to get veneers as you age.

So to actually have a toothbrush

on a two minute timer, which is how

long you should brush your teeth,

and actually has these certain things that you put it in

and it cleans off all the bacteria.

A lot of toothbrushes have fecal matter on 'em.

So it's like, things like that to be able to clean that up.

(laughing)

And it's like you show people why this is valuable

and they end up buying it.

But that toothbrush, most people aren't gonna

buy a $50 toothbrush, but after watching my video,

10 Mistakes You're Making Brushing Your Teeth,

they're like, well, maybe I'll consider it.

And then we try to direct them to go purchase them.

And I only talk about things that I've reviewed,

things I actually wear, things I actually use.

So I can talk about 'em with integrity.

- Love it.

So both men and women who are watching this right now,

what are some high level, strategic tips

that you can give in terms of style.

Let's go back to that.

I think that's something that I admire you for,

is just how through that you're able to help us

transform our lives.

So somebody who is just kinda disheveled

or doesn't even think very much about what they wear,

they just kinda wear what's comfortable.

How would you recommend that, okay, let's say

maybe they're going to an event.

Like a conference, like the one that we're at right now.

How might they dress, how might they approach that?

- Well first off, they have gotta know

there is always a dress code.

Whether or not, no one's gonna say

there's a dress code at Social Media Marketing World

but you notice nobody's walking around naked.

So there apparently is one.

- Or in sandals, even.

- Well, there were a few people walking around in sandals.

- Well, we are in San Diego, we are in San Diego.

- Yeah, we are in San Diego.

But what message do you wanna send?

And I saw there was like someone dressed up

as a cartoon character floating around.

Another person dressed up as a little bit of a surfer.

(engine revving)

Whoa.

- Whoa.

(laughing)

- This thing moves.

- Dude, it moves.

It moves.

But that thing moves too and it'll fall off

if I keep going, so I'm not gonna do that.

Sorry.

(laughing)

- I don't think we could have gotten too far.

But you know, it's about controlling the message.

A lot of guy say they're a t-shirt and jeans kinda guy.

But you know what, that's a fashion trend.

It's being going on for a while.

And so what you're really telling me

is you have haven't thought about it.

And I get it, it's okay,

I think a lot of people lie to themselves

and they say that it doesn't matter.

But it does.

Otherwise, again, they wouldn't wear anything

or they would just wear a paper bag or something.

It really comes down to take the time

to send the message you wanna send.

And for men it's so powerful.

It's just an easy way to up the ante.

And for women to be able to know,

hey, am I maybe sending a message

or can I control it a bit more with certain colors.

So with this conference, if you're gonna speak,

why not go on stage in a nice jacket

that's gonna built up your shoulders,

slip up your waistline, wear a nice red tie,

red is a power signal.

There's a classic study of a guy,

he's on video, and he's talking,

and he reads the exact same script.

He wears a red sweater in one of the videos,

the next sweater, everything's the same,

except it's like a white sweater,

there's almost no color.

Everyone believed the man in the red sweater.

It's much higher percentage of people

agreed and thought he was correct

versus the no color sweater.

So red has this powerful affect on

being able to convince people that you are competent,

that you are an authority.

And when you understand that, it's like,

why would I not, you know,

there's so many things you can't control.

Whether or not they have the presentation set up right,

whether or not the speaker before you went on too long.

But if you could actually convey strength

when you just, without saying a word,

why would you not take this advantage?

It's like playing a basketball game,

and immediately being offered 10 points to start the game,

why would you not take that?

- Right.

That's really interesting.

Okay, so let's talk about the brand

and where you want it go.

I mean, it's growing so fast.

And you're coming out with content every day?

Is it?

- Pretty much.

We put out four videos a week.

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.

I want to get to seven days a week.

But I don't wanna be a slave to my business.

I'm a big fan of Michael Gerber's E-Myth Revisited,

Sam Carpenter's Build this, or what it is,

Build the System, or one of those,

Sam Carpenter's got a great book on it.

And Dan Sullivan over at Strategic Coach,

all these guys talk about being able to create a company

that runs like a nice watch

that you can occasionally shake, you wind,

but in a sense runs on its own,

and you just have to occasionally look at it

and make sure that the time is correct.

- So tell me about your typical week.

What does that look like for you work wise?

- Well, I have an office about 800 meters from my house

in a small town of a 1000 people.

So just shows you can build anything anywhere in the world.

- Anywhere, right.

- And I usually will drive to work

because it is freaking cold right now in Wisconsin.

It's like 10 below zero, 20 below zero.

Plus I'm gonna be running errands after I get off work,

but I will go into the office,

usually at about 9:00 or 10:00

'cause before that I have been

spending a lot of time with my family.

We've got four young kids, my wife and I homeschool.

I say my wife and I, but she is, she's a saint,

and she's an amazing woman.

Anyone out there that, they think they can do this alone,

they're wrong, you've gotta have great partners,

business, personal, and she,

we make breakfast for the kids,

we usually get up not too early,

although I do try to get the gym at 5:30,

but you know, the first three to four hours a day

I'm spending with my kids.

- Yeah.

I'm all about that.

I love that so much.

- It's amazing.

And to be able to get that best part of the day with them,

when they wake up on their own,

they're already like almost a year ahead in school

because my wife just does

a great job with the homeschooling.

We call it worldschool because we also travel quite a bit.

But I may be in the office by

nine, 10 o'clock in the morning,

and then I've got usually meetings with my team.

A lot of people in the Philippines,

a lot of people in Ukraine.

I've got about 18 people that I work with,

and a lot of those people, it's already evening for them.

Mondays I do come in earlier because of

our team meeting at 8:00 a.m.

But I'm usually meeting with my team early

to make sure everything's great,

although we rarely have any

fires or anything crazy going on,

and then by, you know, I try to get

some of the most important things done.

So for me, filming video, creating content,

is very high, like I said,

sponsorships are a big thing for us.

But also by early afternoon, I've maybe got a lot of

that content created and then I'll be able to do

what else I need to do

which is actually building relationships,

talking with people, engaging with

my partners over the MENfluential Media company,

we just had a conference this last weekend,

so I was spending a lot of time on that,

making sure everything was good to go with the conference.

And then afternoons, going in and just

going through systems, making sure they're optimized.

I mean there's always things that pop up.

Every day's a little bit different,

so I wouldn't say I've got the perfect system there.

But it is something I realize,

I wanna be done by 3:00, 4:00,

and be able then to go home.

My son usually goes to the gym about 3:30,

so I like to go watch him with the trainer.

Again we're homeschooling, so we've got

a local trainer that we work with

and him and a number of other boys,

they kind of stay up on their stuff,

getting ready for football,

which for years I resisted him playing football.

But he ends up asking me for three years straight,

I allowed him, and he turns out to be

like star running back for the team,

so I'm like, okay, like, he's much better than I ever was.

- That's awesome.

- Yeah.

- That's cool.

You wanna continue this conversation

outside for a little bit?

- Sure, let's do it.

Now you were asking a question

about how people can brand themselves.

- Yeah, 'cause your brand is so great.

Real men, real style, and it has just such notoriety

in the space that you're in.

Everybody knows it who knows fashion.

How can you build that?

How are you able to do that so well?

- Well I've been doing this for 10 years.

And that's what a lot of people forget.

Is that you don't start and build Rome in a day

or build up this empire.

I started off just simply writing blog posts

for someone that had an audience.

And I gave him my best.

And I always, every single day, I put in

that and I was eager to learn, I wasn't, I had no ego.

It definitely, I needed to make money.

But it was something that I realized okay

this guy, Brett McKay over at the art of Manliness

knew a lot more about getting traffic to a blog than I did.

So I took notes, I talked to him,

that was my compensation was that I got the inside.

So I started writing more on mine.

And then I realized there's this

whole blue ocean with video,

very few people creating video.

So I was pretty fortunate to get in early.

But you can still get in, there's still opportunity.

I've seen people grow amazing YouTube channels

in just the last year.

By actually being basically fabulous.

So you can be first, fabulous,

or the other F which I'm not gonna say here on this one.

But I always think there's a way to be first.

So I just met a guy the other day,

he's got a YouTube channel,

and he's talking about basically style for men

over the age of 40.

He niched down.

And you talk a lot about this.

Basically identifying where there's a burning problem

and where people are willing to part

with their hard earned money willingly

because you're gonna solve that burning problem

and then go in there and dominate.

And there's always new niches being formed.

There are always things changing.

The media changes.

There's always some new kid on the block

that you can go in and jump in

whether it be live video,

whether it be Facebook Watch, whatever it may be.

There's always something new that you can come in

and just own and dominate.

- Love that.

- I think part of it, though, is again,

for 10 years, I have consistently put out style content.

I've stayed very focused.

I go off, like, I made a mistake about seven years ago,

I put out a video on reviewing,

it was called the Creative Roar,

it's a portable speaker.

My audience hated it.

And for good reason.

Why?

Why is a style guy reviewing this speaker?

It just didn't make sense.

I thought it was kinda fun.

But my audience rejected.

So that told me very clearly,

I need to stay pretty much style, grooming,

business communication, which kind of goes into,

so I stay with these body language things.

I realize I can't go too far from my main niche,

which is men's style, men's fashion.

That's kind of where I keep, I maintain,

my main flagpole is at,

and then I do build around it,

but I always go back to what built me in the space.

And there are ways if like a company wants to rebrand

itself at some point, but

for 10 years I've consistently planted flags

around my main base.

And that just simply became unassailable in many ways,

like platform that I was able to build.

- Great, 'cause we hear all the time now,

you gotta build your brand,

and a lot of people think that means

you need a good logo, right?

Or you need a good name.

But it's much more than a name.

What beyond the name, Real Men, Real Style, is the brand?

- Well, you know, as we were walking around the conference,

I keep running into people and they know that

I, they told me how they used my videos to

dress for the conference, to actually

become more professional.

And it's always humbling, but it's also,

it reaffirms that they understand

that I'm about the professional man

and I knew who my avatar was.

It took my a while to figure it out

and I've got many different,

but he's this like 42 year old guy

that maybe has had, something transitioned,

he's either left the military,

he graduated from college, he went through a divorce,

something happened that he changed,

and he needed to pay attention to his image.

So he comes and he finds my channel and he's like okay,

this guy is about professional style.

If he wants bad boy style,

he'll go see my friend, Aaron Marino,

he's got an entire business built

around that over at Alpha M.

Or if he wants young man style,

he can go to Jose over at Teaching Men's Fashion.

If he wants dandy style, he'll go to

Gentleman's Gazette, Raphael Schneider.

All this people are my good friends.

And that's another thing how I was able to build my brand

is I brought in all these other guys.

We created a conference, I kinda became,

'cause it's my conference, I became the host of the party.

And these other people, they helped me,

like I surrounded myself with my peers.

And we actually, I refined my brand

because I realized I had a to separate myself

from these other guys,

and we're in an ocean with tons of fish there

ready to be caught, basically people to work with,

people to help.

And I realized I just need to

be really clear with my message, know who it is,

and continue to build around it.

And occasionally we overlap a bit,

but oftentimes we're more than happy

to pass on hey this guy wants to work with you,

this company is a better fit

now that we work with a lot of sponsorships

and stuff like that.

- I'm just so inspired by your success.

- Well, thank you.

I have to admit, I mean it was your ebook,

years ago, I think that's how I got up on your radar,

I just told you how, yeah,

I followed your advice, created an ebook,

the Seven Deadly Style Sins

which people can still download.

- Ebooks the Smart Way, that's what you read.

- Yeah, Ebooks the Smart Way,

and I created this little ebook using

Microsoft Word, I turned it into a pdf,

to this day, it still almost the same.

And I mean we've had like probably

a million people download that ebook.

- That's insane.

- It is crazy.

- I love it.

- And they happily give me an email address

for a solid 47 page ebook that teaches them

builds up this trust, and of course,

lets them know about my courses,

my advertising opportunities, my website,

my video, my app, my podcast,

my other 25 different ebooks, my free courses,

my premium courses, but all of these things over a decade

have built up based off of starting

with something simple as free content.

You talked in your story about how you had a website

with all that information and then you packaged it up

into an ebook and started to sell it.

I did the same thing.

I didn't reinvent the wheel.

I simply copied what you did and it worked.

And it blew me away that people would pay

initially $17.00 for an ebook that

hey you can get this from free,

it's just simply my best articles brought into an ebook.

Then I upped the price, $27.00.

Then I upped the price to $47.00,

then I felt bad about that 'cause I'm like

well if I'm gonna pay, I mean for that much money

they should get a course,

so I took those free articles and added

like little gamification, improved 'em a bit,

rewrote them, turned it into a course,

which I charged $97.00 now a $197.00,

from something I used to give away for free.

And every single day those people buy it,

the checks come in, well they purchase it.

We've created multiple courses, multiple revenue streams.

So it's like you said, smart, passive income.

Showed me the power of

multiple revenue streams from affiliates

to products, multiple products,

to multiple advertising streams,

to having even live events.

And again, it's, the great part is,

so our buddy, Ramid Saitee, he killed the affiliate program.

And most people you tell 'em that

oh your business is gonna lose

fifty to a hundred thousand this year,

it's like, oh my gosh,

okay, well I've got other revenue streams,

it was just one of twenty that we were receiving.

And now we've got a new affiliate

who in this first month made us $50,000,

so it's like I'm gonna blow past Ramid,

and I'm very, I mean I'm happy I had that one,

but when you've got 20 different revenue streams,

and one dies, you just simply,

okay, I've gotta go back in here and replant

and find other things that I can grow here.

- Dude, congratulate on all of your success.

Thank you so much for the help.

- I appreciate you, Pat.

I mean, fucking phenomenal resource,

I love what you do.

And I tell people it's like you've got

an amazing trust factor with your people

'cause you always bring in amazing, smart people,

and it's always about authenticity,

and about the real deal from you putting up your numbers

to actually you being the real deal,

to going after haters in the sense of

I've gotta like show them that I'm a real person.

Everyone sees how much you love your audience

and you care about 'em,

and to me that's the secret to your success.

You just love your customers, you love your audience.

I mean you're scared to sometimes turn 'em into customers,

even though we wanna give you money for courses.

- Well I mean, that's the secret, I just care,

just like you do for your audience too.

- Yep.

- You guys, thank you so much for watching this.

Check out Antonio at Real Men, Real Style,

all the links are below in the description,

in the card, in the end card, all the good things.

Any final words of advice for people?

- Get started.

That's the one regret I have

is that I didn't listen to you sooner.

- Awesome.

Thanks, man.

Appreciate you. - You're welcome.

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