This post is an interview transcript.
John: Hey, this is John Lee Dumas from EntrepreneurOnFire and you are listening to Marketing to Crush Your Competitors Podcast. Get ready to crush it with your marketing and ignite.
Marketing to Crush Your Competitors Podcast Episode 36.
This is the place where successful entrepreneurs share their hustle to get where they are today. Discover how not taking no for an answer led them to achieve their goals. Learn about who inspire them and how they use marketing to crush it in their business. Get financial, spiritual, emotional and physical tips that are working for them right now. This is the Marketing to Crush Your Competitors Podcast. Here's Fabienne Raphael.
Fabienne: Hello, everybody and welcome again to Marketing to Crush Your Competitors Podcast. Today, we have a guest with style, Antonio Centeno. Antonio is a style expert, video marketer, copywriter, and business systems creator. He currently runs A Tailored Suit, a men's wear store that provides tools to create custom clothing completely online and writes at Real Men Real Style, a multimedia style blog full of great articles on men's style.
Antonio also virtually consults with businesses and individuals across the world on all issues concerning men's wear, men's style and fashion, and online retail targeting the male consumer. Antonio, welcome to the show.
Antonio: Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Fabienne.
Fabienne: It's my pleasure to have you here. I said a little bit about you in the beginning but if you want, take a few minutes to tell us more about you and what you do.
Antonio: Well, I think we were talking about this right before we started recording. I like to think of myself as just a regular guy who tries to make style practical to the regular guy out there. I'm not a big fan of catwalks and all the other high end fashion stuff. In my background, I was in the United States Marine Corps, so I like to take a military history. I also have a background in science. And I make style applicable to guys, just for regular guys out there.
Because I see so many people shooting themselves in the foot by not paying attention to these things and trying to dismiss them when they really do matter. And that I found is just a great purpose for Real Men Real Style and it works well because I also own a custom clothier and a few other things. But, yeah, that's kind of my position, I guess.
Fabienne: Antonio, if you have to summarize your entrepreneurial journey with one word, what would it be and why?
Antonio: Discovery. And it would just be simply be because I am constantly learning. I find that one of the reasons I love waking up and I love doing what I'm doing is I constantly am going out there and having to figure out new ways to solve problems. And every single day, we just put out a new website. And I just learned a heck of a lot about transferring one website to another server, all of the technology stuff, which I know can drive a lot of people crazy.
But if you approach it, I think, the right way, you really come away from it having learned a lot. And I always try to document what I learn so then I could pass it on to others.
Fabienne: I guess, in your journey, you've been through some challenges. And sometimes, as entrepreneurs, we face a lot of nos. Are there times, Antonio, that you did not take no as an answer?
This post is an interview transcript.
Antonio: Pretty much every day. And I've systemized it. Because to be honest, I don't like rejection. I don't think there's very many people out there that like rejection. So I've created automated systems. I use Infusionsoft. I use a lot it, which is basically email marketing on steroids, and it's a CMS system. And I've discovered that I don't like to get nos a lot, so I let that system send follow-up requests, send, make offers.
And so every single day, we're making hundreds of offers via email. And I like the way the system works out because all I have to do is mail a small percentage of those and we have a very profitable company. In addition, I've also got some manual — Well, not so much manual but I would say more human elements. I have a number of VAs that work for me. And their job is to protect me from, I would say, some of the negativity that comes with when you're a very persistent person.
But I have found that I would rather be in the position of having made the offer and then to know I made the offer than people to go by my company and not know that we have any products that are going to help change their lives. And, I think, that's the key component that drives me. And why I can't accept no is that I realize that I've got great products. They do transform people's lives. And people sometimes aren't as ready for them.
But if they put skin in the game, if they end up grabbing one of my products, I've got less than 1% return rate. So to me, that tells me that my products are great. And I offer money back guarantee, lifetime. So, I mean, people can come back. And we still only have 1% return rate because when people — And if you truly believe in your product, you shouldn't be afraid of that no. I mean, it's always going to sting, but you can set up systems which I just talked about to kind of insulate you from having to deal with those every day.
Fabienne: Did you have a moment during that journey where you simply wanted to give it all up?
Antonio: Yeah. I have those moments all the time. I mean, this summer has been tough. I mean, tough in different ways. I mean, there's times when things are — To me, things have to be relative. My wife, I think I mentioned before that she came over from Ukraine just a few years ago when we got married back in 2004. But I brought her over to the United States in 2007. Her grandmother spent a couple of years in a Nazi work camp.
So let's be relative in terms of what is really difficult. I think we've become soft. And this is coming from — I was in the United States Marine Corps. I spent time in Iraq during the invasion. I'd been on multiple deployments. And still, I know that we can get through a lot. And I've seen extreme poverty. If you're listening to this podcast, you are in the top 1%. And to be honest, I don't really think we've got too many excuses out there.
And I understand bad things happen to people. Probably one of the darkest times in my entire entrepreneur journey was when I was really running out of money with my company and my sister committed suicide. And I am the oldest son in my family. So I'm having to figure out a way to pay my mortgage while having my sister's urn in my lap traveling across the south west United States.
It was crappy. I mean, why am I trying? I should be grieving, and yet I'm trying to create sales because I got to pay my mortgage. I mean…
This post is an interview transcript.
