The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Winning "The Apprentice" / "The Mega-Brands That Built America"
Thu, 13 Jun 2024
Entrepreneur, television personality, author and speaker Bill Rancic talks about becoming an entrepreneur at age 10, the 3 biggest lessons he learned from competing on (and winning) The Apprentice, and "The Mega-Brands That Built America”, airing on The History Channel.Hear Bill's full interview in Episode 460 of The Action Catalyst.
Full Episode
I want to talk about your first entrepreneurial venture. I mean, the very first. When did you catch the button? Well, the first business I had was with my grandma and I was 10. I was at my grandma's for the weekend. My mom and dad were heading out of town. And I woke up one morning and my grandma was in the kitchen making breakfast. And I was probably like a lot of entrepreneurs out there.
I would always ask a million questions. What goes here? Why are you doing that? How does that work? And my grandmother decided she was going to take me in the kitchen and she was going to teach me how to cook. So I spent all day making pancakes with her in the kitchen.
And then the next day I woke up and I raced into the kitchen and I picked up the phone and I called all the old ladies who lived on my grandmother's block and I invited them all to come over for a pancake breakfast. And they loved it. And then when they left, they all left $5 bills underneath their plate. And I said, oh my, I'm onto something here.
So then for the next five weeks, I went to my grandmother's every weekend and I kind of had this big shift restaurant and Then my mom caught wind of what was going on and she shut the operation down. She claimed I was taking her social security money. So that business ended immediately. That was my first start, to be honest with you.
And then from there, I started buying and selling used cars when I was 14. There was an old publication. This was way before the internet called the trade and times. And I was using that to buy news cars and then resell them. And then I had the boat washing wax business in college.
And then when I was right out of college, I took a job briefly for about eight months and I realized that I couldn't work for anyone else. And then I started an online cigar subscription company. that we sent cigars to your home every month. We had over 10,000 monthly subscribers getting these boxes sent to their home every single month. It took off.
I started it in a 400 square foot studio apartment and then it quickly grew and grew and it was something.
You were the winner of season one of The Apprentice, which maybe people don't remember was an absolute phenomenon when it was on the air. What was it like to suddenly be in the public eye and what are some of the habits and practices that set you apart from your peers and competitors and ultimately helped you win?
Yeah, it was huge. It's funny that I won the first season of The Apprentice 20 years ago last month. So it's kind of ironic. And it changed my life. There's no question about it. We had 25 million viewers every week watching. Today, if a hit show gets 3 million, it's considered a complete success. So that was the golden age of TV in our generation. but it was remarkable.
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