You’re Hired!

Bill Rancic, winner of season one of The Apprentice, has been an entrepreneur since he was young, but nothing could have prepared him for the journey has taken since winning The Apprentice. In addition to working side-by-side with Donald Trump, Rancic is a renowned speaker and bestselling author. Rancic joined Chris Hurn to talk about his book, “You’re Hired,” and life on The Apprentice.

Chris: So why – in your words, do you think you got hired by Trump in Season 1 of The Apprentice?

Bill: Well, I think there were a number of reasons. One, I had a good work ethic.

Two, I was able to deliver results. But one of the things I always talk about in my speeches is that I think there are three reasons why people are successful, and why they’re able to stand out from the pack.

The first one is a term called “practical execution.” I firmly believe in this. I think a lot of people talk a great game and they claim that they’re going to accomplish so much. I find that most of those people, who talk such a big game, are just talkers and that’s it.

In actuality, I didn’t do a lot of talking on The Apprentice. I kept my mouth shut. I put my head down, and I worked hard and delivered results. So, I think that’s critical. I think you have to also be agile. You’ve got to be willing to change up your game plan.

Given the current economic conditions, we’re finding this ever so important. Those who are able to adapt and have agility are the ones that are going to survive this economic crisis. Those that don’t, won’t. It’s quite simple. You’ve got to be willing to take the blinders off and almost be on a swivel and see what’s happening and be able to adjust as it’s happening.

Chris: I always call that the business world equivalent of Darwinism. It’s not the strong or the swift; it’s the most adaptive that survive.

Bill: That’s exactly it. Lastly, it’s about risk. You’ve got to be willing to take risks. As you probably know, you talk to a lot of people who claim they’re entrepreneurs, and they think they’re big risk takers. But they don’t know how to manage the risk. You’ve got to manage the risk and many times you’ve got to micromanage that risk. In the end, you’ve got to convert it into success. Otherwise, it’s wasted risk.

Chris: Right. I think that’s a good point. Let’s talk about what you think your single greatest lesson was that you learned from Trump, whether on the show or since?

Bill: Well, I learned a lot from Trump. I’m very grateful for the opportunity he gave me and how he opened up his world to me, which is incredible. But I think a couple things really stand out. One thing about Donald Trump: he’s not afraid to think big.

Chris: He seems to have blurred the distinction a little bit between work and play. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, that’s what we strive to get to. Would you say that’s a fair characterization?

Bill: Well, he loves what he does. I think anyone who loves what they’re doing will be successful at it. My dad, when I was a kid, always used to say, “Find something that you really love to do, and the money will follow.” I never wanted to believe him. I was like, “I want the money. I want the money. I want the money.”

But there’s a lot of truth to that. I see that now with friends of mine who are doing these jobs that they hate, and they’re never able to get to the level of success that they should, because they can’t wait to get out of the office at 5:01 and in the morning they’re miserable. They have to hit their alarm clock snooze button ten times in order to muscle themselves out of bed.

When you love what you’re doing, which I’ve been fortunate enough to always love what I’ve been doing, you pop out of bed before the alarm clock goes off.

Chris: What do you think you did quickly to get noticed by Trump on The Apprentice?

Bill: Well, I delivered victories. Every time I was a project manager, I brought in big wins, not just wins, but big wins — where I annihilated the other team. I was creative in how I did it. I thought that was critical. I didn’t lie back. I was taking the temperature of the room and trying to size up the competition and see what I needed to do. Obviously, my strategy was effective because I won.

Chris: Right. Well, I think from a viewer’s perspective, it’s tough for us. Through the magic of television editing, we have no idea what your day was like.

Bill: Every episode was about four days. It was tough. There were no days off. We operated on very little sleep every night. The conditions were stressful.

Chris: Yet at the same time, you did what a lot of people in business wish they could probably do more of, which is you had such concentrated actions in what you were doing. You were so focused on the task at hand without virtually any distractions.

Bill: Yeah, definitely. You were eating it, breathing it, and sleeping it. Not really sleeping it ‘cause you didn’t get much sleep. But yeah, it was around the clock. It would be four or five in the morning, coming back to get an hour or two of sleep, before we had to go out and do it all over again.

Chris: All right, let’s talk about the book. The book came out about six months after you won, didn’t it? What was your motivation to write the book?

Bill: Yeah, somewhere around there. I’d always read books along the way or skimmed them along the way, and you would always get these books and they were written for people, who had Harvard MBAs, in these esoteric terms.

I thought, “You know what? I’m a guy who was an entrepreneur ever since I was a little kid.” I wanted to come out with a book to kind of speak to every man and not just a guy who’s got an Ivy League MBA.

So if you’ll notice, the book’s written in terms that everyone can understand. I wanted to – I’m a believer in entrepreneurs and I want to fuel that spirit. I think it’s what made our country as great as it is. I thought this was a book that would hopefully inspire and motivate people to go out and follow their dreams.

Chris: What do you think was your strongest message you relayed to people in You’re Hired: How to Succeed in Business and Life?

Bill: Ah, the strongest message. I think when you think about my road and my journey, there had been failures along the way. I think one of the things that I’ve noticed is that the kids today are not allowed to fail. Let me explain.

When you see these parents and they are – when the kid is born, the kids are automatically put on these waiting lists to get into the right preschool so they can get into the right kindergarten, so they can get into the right grade school, so on and so on.

These parents are putting so much pressure on these kids at such a young age. Kids are afraid to make mistakes. They’re afraid to fail. Therefore, they don’t even try.

When I go and speak at universities around the country, I always tell these kids, “Go out there. It’s okay to start a small business when you’re in college. It may work. It may not. Get internships. You’ve to go out and experience things and find out what you like and what you don’t like. Otherwise, you’re gonna be 25 years old and you’re not gonna have any clue of what you really want out of life.”

Chris: I’m with you. So okay. You said a second ago, you’ve been an entrepreneur since you were young. How far back do you go, and what did you do?

Bill: Yeah. My first business was when I was ten. I had to spend the weekend at my grandmother’s, and I learned how to make pancakes. The next morning, I got up and I called all the old ladies, and I invited them over for a pancake breakfast. We had a great time.

When they left, I was clearing their plates away from the table, and I noticed that each and every one of these women had left a five-dollar bill underneath the plate. I was stunned. I thought, “Wow. I’m on to something here.” For the next five weeks, I kept going to my grandmother’s for the weekends. My parents were wondering what was going on, and they soon figured out I was running a makeshift restaurant out of my grandmother’s house.

That was kind of my start as an entrepreneur.

Chris: That’s great. Tell us about the cigar company. What’s the genesis of that?

Bill: Just out of an idea. Had an idea and no one was doing it. I think we were the first-ever cigar of the month club to come out and experienced a favorable response right out of the gate.

I never really smoked cigars until I started the company. It wasn’t like I was a cigar aficionado and I needed to get a cigar business. It was just seizing an opportunity.

There was a time when Demi Moore was smoking cigars and Schwarzenegger, and it was like the hottest thing going. We started this company right about when that started to take off. So the timing was – well, it couldn’t have been better.

Chris: What did you base it off of? Were there beers of the month back then?

Bill: Yeah. I’d known the guys that had done the beer of the month. I read about the guy doing wine. I thought, “Hmm,” and I decided to do this. One of the people I actually called up was the guy who started Vermont Teddy Bear.

: A guy named John Sortino. I’ll never forget this man. I called him and I said, “I’m thinking about starting this cigar of the month club. Can you give me some advice?” The guy took my call, and he gave me advice. I was shocked because I wouldn’t have wanted to convolute the space [if I were him]. I would have thought, “Why create another competitor?”

But he gave me some tips and some guidance on how to buy radio advertising, and I’d never done that before. That was it. We let it rip.

Chris: Now, there’s an interesting story in the book, I remember, about how you got a break, and, in classic fashion, you created it with what I would refer to as a “shock-and-awe box.” That’s how you got on the radio, wasn’t it?

Bill: Yeah, I was resigning from my job that I had taken right out of college selling commodity metal, and the owners of the company laughed at me. I was explaining how I was going to become a millionaire with the cigar business and I was gonna be leaving. They sat across the table, and they laughed at me. It made me mad.

As I was driving back to the office where the cigar company was run out of, I was so determined to prove these guys wrong. I got back and I wrote a letter asking for help. I put the letter in a box, and I put some cigars in there and went and got these little Coke bottle glasses that you wear on Halloween, the nerd glasses. I put a little note on the glasses. The note read, “Please take a closer look at my business idea.”

I sent them out to the top ten morning radio stations in Chicago. About a week later, I got a call from the No. 1 morning radio show and she said, “Scott’ll have you on the air to talk about cigars of the month.” Sure enough, I went in there and the guy hammed it up, and we went on the air for about 40 minutes just talking about this product. He was continually giving out the 1-800 number and the website.

When I got back to the apartment where our office was, every phone we had in there was ringing off the hook with people wanting to place orders. So that was kind of my lucky break.

Chris: Did you ever dream that your book would make the The New York Times Bestseller List?

Bill: No. Come on. That was – it was – everything over the last seven years has been just a whirlwind, an amazing experience for me. I’ve been able to learn and grow from it. I’ve been able to do some pretty neat things. Writing two books. I also wrote a kids’ book called Beyond the Lemonade Stand and it was for kids between the ages of eight and thirteen to bring out their entrepreneurial spirit.

Chris: Well, let’s talk about what you’re doing these days because I think when you came down here in June, for a YPO speech, you were just about to launch a new television show.

Bill: Yeah, when I was down there, we were in the middle of filming. The show is called We Mean Business. It’s a show where I go in to small businesses that are having difficulty and try to give them a complete turnaround from a physical standpoint and try to readjust the way they think and their mindset, because we can go in and make physical changes and update their technology and help them with marketing, but if their mindset doesn’t change, then they’re not going to succeed.

Chris: Yeah. It’s all about mindset.

Bill: We’ve been – we faced some challenges. Some companies we’ve been able to help. Others, we haven’t. But it’s a show that airs on A&E on Saturday mornings.

It’s been a lot of fun to do and very rewarding, especially given the current economic conditions, because we were able to make changes in these people’s lives that could potentially affect generations to come because this business could be passed on to their kids and their kids’ kids. That’s powerful when you think about it.

Chris: How many episodes did you guys do?

Bill: We did eight episodes. I’m sure they’ll be more to come.

Chris: So you’re kind of like Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen, just without the four-letter words, I take it.

Bill: Without the foul mouth, yeah. Exactly.

Chris: (Laughter) That’s good. Well, hey, Bill, I’ll let you go. I appreciate your time.

Bill: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.

To learn more about Bill Rancic or to purchase his books, visit www.BillRancic.com.

Chris Hurn is currently President, CEO, Cofounder and Board member of Mercantile Commercial Capital (MCC). His company was recently added to the 2007 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America, number 245 with 951% growth over the past 3 years. Chris is well-known for his innovative marketing achievements and continues to coach and consult with various business owners and entrepreneurs. To date, MCC has closed commercial loans in 31 states for over $350 million in total project costs – one business owner at a time, and has been voted “Best Place to Work” by the Orlando Business Journal for 3 years running.

A few other business achievements Chris has received:

• Reader’s Choice Award for “Most Respected Executive in Central Florida” and “Best Small Company in Central Florida.”
• “SBA Marketing Guru of the Year.”
• NADCO’s Banker of the Year.
• SBA Financial Services Champion.
• Top Twenty Most Influential People in Small Business lending.
• Hallmark Award for Top Producer in Mortgage Lending.
• “Top Male, 40 Under 40″ in Orlando.
• One of the “100 Most Influential People” in Orlando.

Throughout his career, Chris has been in various leadership positions, including his background as business consultant and financier with GE Capital and as CFO for the NAI RealVest group of companies. Chris’ educational achievements are equally impressive. He graduated from Loyola University with two magna cum laude Bachelor Degrees; earned a Master’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Center (formerly at the Wharton School of Business); and only spent one year at Georgetown University Law Center before wising-up about becoming an attorney. Chris is a frequent speaker and writer and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, LA Times, the Sacramento Bee, the Orlando Sentinel, Scotsman Guide and many other regional and nationally-recognized trade publications. He maintains a busy civic calendar as a Board member with the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Board and the Florida Hospital Foundation Board, as well his involvement with many other esteemed community organizations. Chris is married to his wife of 12 years, Shannon, and has two children, Reilly and Julianna.

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