The Action Catalyst
Nothing Starts with No, with Bill Rancic (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Television, Business)
Tue, 04 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, how he was treated by Trump, words of wisdom from Howie Mandel, breaking down goals into smaller victories, "The Mega-Brands That Built America” on The History Channel, the way fatherhood forced him to change both his personal and business mindset, and learning from Neil Armstrong if the moon landing was a hoax?Mentioned in this episode:Learn more at SouthwesternConsulting.com/Coaching/StudentsSouthwestern Student Coaching
It's the worst possible business you can get into. It has the highest failure rate. It's like investing in resources. It's just like, this is a way to burn money. Horrible idea, horrible idea. It's okay to fail, but it's never okay not to try. We don't learn much from success. We learn a hell of a lot from failure. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I don't make them twice.
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Bill Rancic is the winner of season one of The Apprentice, a successful entrepreneur many times over, author of four books, and has delivered hundreds of speeches for prestigious clients like Coca-Cola, Capital One, Marriott, Wells Fargo, and others. You can now catch him featured on History Channel's The Mega Brands That Built America. Bill, welcome to the Action Catalyst.
Oh, thank you for having me. I have quite an introduction. Bill, you're joining us from Chicago today. You're from Chicago. Your career seems to always keep you around Chicago or take you back to Chicago. For our listeners who've never been there, what's so special about Chicago and why is the pizza better?
Well, I'll answer the first part of the question first, and it's the people. Chicago is a big city that gives you a hug when you come here. The people just are real, they're hardworking, and they're from here. It's generational. And it's like Boston and a lot of these great cities where people take a lot of pride in their city. So the architecture is amazing. The lakefront is incredible.
But at the end of the day, it's about the people. And the pizza just is the best. The deep dish pizza, no one makes it better than here in Chicago. 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.
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 experience. Then my mom caught wind of what was going on and she shut the operation down. She claimed I was taking their 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 used cars and then resell them. And then I had the boat wash and 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.
Sounds like you internalized a lot of these important business principles very early on. I actually started a division of our company where we focus on providing one-on-one coaching to youth. And I currently serve as president of our foundation, Kindness for Kids. And in that foundation, it just reminds me that we actually work with
young people, in particular, the foundation sponsors underserved youth, aging out foster youth, students that don't usually have mentorship and guidance in their life. And then we wrap coaching around them to help develop their skills, the exact kind of skills that I think it sounds like you practiced and so many successful people practice early on in life.
So, you know, if you could walk us through some of the skills that you learned in those early days.
Well, for me, when I was growing up, the best lesson I learned from my parents was it's okay to fail. It's okay to make mistakes, but it's never okay not to try. With social media and the way the world has evolved, everything has to be perfect. And that's not how the real world works.
And a lot of kids are afraid to try something because they're afraid they're going to fail, or they're afraid what their friends or their colleagues are going to say, and they might be embarrassed. So entrepreneurship is really the birthplace of innovation.
If you look at all these major companies that are out there today, they started in a garage or a studio apartment, and they evolved into these massive corporations, Apple, Amazon, I can go on and on. And we also are able to change the world through that innovation as well. And we have to keep Main Street alive. And I think we got to keep that spirit alive in America.
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.
It was just as if someone slipped the switch and I was introduced to the world. And I was insane. But I learned a lot of lessons because we had really good competitors. There were 16 of us, great entrepreneurs, great business people, Harvard and Yale and all these amazing business schools. And I think there were three things I learned that I implement every day. And one is you have to be agile.
You have to be willing to adjust and adapt and react to what's happening around you. And we saw it during COVID. Those who were able to adjust and react stayed around. Those who didn't became extinct. And that is my belief with or without a pandemic. I think, secondly, we have to learn to think like a conductor. You have to check your ego at the door and
You've got to think of a conductor of an orchestra. So that's hiring the best people. Don't try to play every instrument yourself. So, you know, a lot of people, they think they know everything. And I don't believe that. I think you've got to get the good, you know, the best people you can around you. And I think you have to stop making excuses.
I think, you know, one of the reasons people fail is because they point to their left and they point to the right and they blame everyone and everything around them. If you look at the people who are in that rare air, they point the finger at themselves because at the end of their career, there's no one else to blame but themselves.
Your first gig after winning was helping to manage the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. That must have been intimidating. Had you done any real estate before?
Well, I had done a little bit, but the biggest project I had done was a 34 unit building. So much, much different. But I went into it with the right mindset. And I think it's kind of a Midwest mindset. I went in and my goal wasn't to try to be the big boss. I went in it trying to be the sponge. And I realized that I didn't know everything and that I had to get good people around me.
And that was it. And I wanted to learn everything I could from everyone, the great architects and engineers and mechanical engineers. And that was kind of my goal when I first got out. I took my time. I kind of sat back and I took it all in before I started to kind of get into my role.
We don't want to spend a lot of time talking about Trump because there's a lot about him out there already on both sides. But is there anything about him that everybody's got wrong?
I will say he treated me exceptionally well, treated me like one of his children. And ultimately, he wanted me to succeed. He wanted me to be as successful as I could. And I think that's what he wants for most people. I don't want to get into politics or any of that. I get it. The world we're living in is very divided.
But I can just share with you my personal firsthand experience and the way he treated me was he far exceeded any expectation I had. and really took me under his wing. So it was a life-changing experience that I will always remember and always cherish. And I look back on that experience of being on that show, and I met my wife through that experience. I have my child. It really was amazing.
I've been able to do a bunch of TV shows as a result. So life is full of opportunities, and you have to seize opportunities. I was just with Howie Mandel the other day, and I'm like, give him a shout out. He had a great quote. He said, nothing starts with no. And if you always say no to opportunities, you're going to wind up with nothing.
I came home and I told my 11-year-old son that because it's amazing advice. You got to be willing to take risks and go out there. And when I took that opportunity, this was the early days of reality television. 20 years ago, the TV stations weren't filled with the reality TV that we had today. So It could have ruined me. It could have been an absolute disaster and I could have embarrassed myself.
But I knew that I wanted to take a risk and the upside, I think, outweighed the downside.
Well, like you said, The Apprentice didn't scare you away from reality TV because you made your way into producing and starring in reality television alongside your wife, Juliana. You'd already been in the public eye, but how did you cope with having your personal life in the spotlight instead of just your professional life?
You know, we made a kind of a promise to each other that if we were going to do, it was called the Julianna Bill Show, and it ran for eight seasons on E! And we said, we're going to use this show for good and not evil. You know, so many of these shows are poisonous, and it's just putting out the wrong thing.
You know, and over the course of the eight seasons, we were able to tackle infertility before anyone was talking about infertility. We were able to talk about Julianna's cancer battle with breast cancer. which raised so much awareness, all of our mission trips to Haiti and the different philanthropic things we did.
So we really used the show as a positive platform, and it was a show you could watch with your kids. And that was something we were proud of. So that was kind of what we did. We were the executive producers of the show. We controlled all the content. And our lives aren't filled with drama. That's just not how we live. We're Midwest people, normal. I'm a regular Chicago guy. Yeah.
Well, continuing that long television career, you're now featured on the mega brands that built America airing on the History Channel, which is really entertaining. Look into the early innovations in some of the biggest businesses of our time. Do you have a favorite episode or one that surprised you the most?
Well, I'll tell you, I love the History Channel. I've always been a fan of the History Channel. In the early days, I used to binge watch modern marvels and all their amazing programming. And when this opportunity came along, I knew I wanted to do it. It took me all about 10 seconds to say, where do I need to be? There's so many great episodes this season. The evolution of credit cards.
There was a gentleman who was out to dinner and back in the early days, you had to pay cash or you wrote a check. And this guy was out to dinner with clients. He forgot his checkbook. He didn't have enough cash on him. He was horribly embarrassed. He had to go to the men's room and call his wife and she had to bring him a checkbook.
And he left and he said, I'm never going to let that happen again. And through that embarrassing moment, he created Diners Club Card. And now it's a $6 trillion industry, the credit card business. So I love how innovation really comes from necessity. Nike's another great one. I'm a huge fan of Nike. But the co-founder of Nike, along with Phil Knight, was in this kitchen one day.
His wife was making waffles. And that was how he came up with the sole of the Nike shoe, from a waffle iron. He made the first shoe on a waffle iron. So it's really educational. I watch it with my 11-year-old son. He loves it. He would watch it even if I wasn't on the show. It's a great way to give people the vitamin without them knowing they're taking the vitamin.
Are there any themes that you keep seeing show up again and again between the businesses?
Well, the one theme is everyone has failures, right? All these people have failed at something along the way. And we don't learn much from success. We learn a hell of a lot from failure. Again, and that's my theme. The young people coming up today have this absolute fear of failure, right? It's something that they have to overcome. Otherwise, they're not going to grow.
You're going to really stunt your growth. And I look back on my career and I've made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I don't make them twice. That's a real failure when you make them twice.
Bill, if you were making the show 100 years into the future, is there a modern day brand or company you think would make the cut?
Everything Elon Musk is doing, no question. The guy's changing the world. I mean, what he's got going on, the way his brain is wired, he's her modern day Einstein. It's unbelievable what he's going to do with these self-driving taxis and the Tesla, even down to the chip that he's putting in these people's brains.
I mean, there's a guy, he's a paraplegic and he's able to play chess and all these games with just his mind. I mean, think about this, right? It is absolutely remarkable. He's the first guy to re-land a rocket. NASA has been doing it 55 years, 60 years. And he comes in and he's able to re-land a rocket. So I think anything he's doing will be on the show. He's wired differently.
And where we see problems that are insurmountable, he comes up with solutions. And that's what I always tell people that work for us. Don't come to me with problems. Come to me with solutions. Because there's always going to be problems. No one's going to live a profit-free life. So you better be good at solving problems. And that's, I think, the way his mind is wired.
Nothing is out of the question. Would you have ever thought you're going to put a brain chip in a human being's brain? I would have never thought that. Never in a million years. And it's happening. So he's got a gift. And he's been public about it. He is on the spectrum and has Asperger's.
And it goes to show you that the beautiful thing about life is that we're all different and we all have strengths and we all have weaknesses. And where a lot of people may see that as a disability, he turns that into a hell of a gift and a hell of an advantage because he's not neurotypical.
Yeah, he's made it to almost a superpower. Okay, let's talk about food. You mentioned earlier that you were mixing your love of food and business already at age 10. And today you own a number of highly celebrated restaurants across the country. Tell us about your evolution into full on restaurateur.
I realized early on that I loved food and I loved cooking, but I also realized as an adult that it's the worst possible business you can get into. It has the highest failure rate. It's like investing in racehorses. It's just not a great return.
But my wife was born in Naples, Italy, and whenever her mom would come into town to visit, we would have people lined up to come over for dinner at the door to have her home cooking from Naples. And then one day, Juliana said, we should open up an Italian restaurant. And I'm thinking, this is a way to burn money. Like, horrible idea, horrible idea.
And we're out to dinner one night with a guy named Greg Olson, who used to be at Chicago Berry. He's now a commentator for Fox. And Juliana and I are at dinner with him and his wife. And he says, well, you're going to open up an Italian restaurant. You should talk to my friend, Arjit. We kind of courted each other for a year and a half or so.
And then we opened up our first one 13 or 14 years ago right here in Chicago. Then we opened up a second one and a third one. And now we have them spread throughout the country and we're opening up more. We've got a lot in the pipeline. What's your favorite meal? Does it have to be one of your restaurants? I love a good cheeseburger. I love cheeseburger and fries.
I ran the New York marathon a couple of years ago when I finished. I got a double cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake. And it was just like, that was it. That was heaven for me. Can we do a quick lightning round?
Yeah, hit me. What's one thing you own that you should probably throw out?
Oh my gosh. One thing I own that I should probably throw out. A lot of old clothes. I got to donate a lot of these clothes because they've been sitting there for 10 years and I haven't worn them. They probably don't fit anymore either after COVID. Picked up a few pounds during COVID. And it's harder to come off now that I'm in my 50s. But yeah, just stuff that I'll never wear again.
Who's the person you always wanted to meet but never have? I was always a huge fan of Frank Sinatra. And he's someone I just loved and just thought he was so cool. I loved him. I was fortunate enough, I met Neil Armstrong about 15 years ago. I was at an event speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and he was also speaking. And that was someone on my list.
I never thought in a million years I would meet him and we had dinner together. I'm a huge aviation fan. Unbelievable to be able to have dinner with him.
So you can settle the debate then firsthand about whether the moon landing was a hoax? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He was so, so amazing. Just a wonderful guy. What's the one habit or practice that saves you the most time each day?
I plan out my next day the night before. So I'm a big legal pad guy and I pick out what I'm going to wear the night before. So when I get up, I'm going. It's ready to go. No thinking about it. That's it. I'm a big list guy and I get real satisfaction from checking the items on the list.
Define what success means to you and how you know when you've actually achieved it.
It's a tough question. For entrepreneurs, it's kind of a blessing and a curse because oftentimes you have that never satisfied mindset. And it's something that I'm trying to improve upon. I think when you climb the mountain, you got to stop and look what you just did instead of trying and staring at the next peak that you have to climb. So for me, I celebrate successes along the way.
And it was something I learned from training for a marathon. When a competitive marathon runner starts the race, he breaks it down and he says, I'm going to get to mile five in this time. And I'm going to get to mile 12 and 15. And he has little celebratory mile markers along the way. That's kind of how I approach things in life.
I look at the bigger picture and that's in the back of my mind, but then I set little ones along the way and I take time to celebrate those little victories on the path to the larger one. What's something significant you've changed your mind about recently? That's another great question. Wow, these are awesome. I think...
You know, I think I've changed my mind a little bit on being flexible in life. And I think having a child makes you do that. You know, when I was in kind of growth mode and in business mode, you know, I was very regimented and, you know, kind of very precise. And I think having a child, you know, you have to kind of be a little more flexible and you got to slow the train down.
And I think that's okay in life. You know, you go through different seasons in life and You know, you don't want to have any regrets. And for me, I've learned to kind of be okay with working less. And I don't need, you know, I think I know when enough is enough. And I think I always wanted more and more and more. And now I'm like, okay, well, if that doesn't happen, that's okay.
You know, God's got a plan. And I'm learning to surrender more, where I used to try to muscle it myself. And now I just kind of hand it over to the big man. And I never grew up with money. And now that we have achieved a little bit of success, we realize that, yeah, my mom was right. Money doesn't buy happiness. My parents were both school teachers.
So that was ingrained into my head and I didn't want to believe them. And they were right. It's about the people that you surround yourself with in life. It's about the relationships and And I think being a good steward with the gifts God gave you, I think that's ultimately the mission in life. You got to use the tools that you've been given and use them wisely.
Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. Can you share the best piece of advice that you willfully and totally ignored?
Oh my God. Well, I've ignored a lot of advice and certainly could have gotten in on deals early. I won't say the names of the companies, but I passed on them and it would have been a massive windfall. But I think I learned this and I got this advice early on, but I didn't realize how true it was until later in life that there's always going to be those people around you who
Wish they had your drive, your ambition, your vision, but they don't. Well, they try to pull you down in order to build themselves up. You got to be very careful about the people that you come into contact with because those people, they may be your friends, your family, but they don't really have your best interest in mind. And you have to be aware of them.
And I read this article that said the majority of the people we come into contact with on a daily basis are negative. I wanted to say you're never going to be able to avoid these people when you're aware of who they are and what their intentions are. you negate their power, right? And that's something that now I've learned to do.
And I've learned to, sometimes you got to fire friends and you got to love people from afar and even family members, you know, and you got to remove that toxic, you know, vibe from your life. It's just, it's, it's poison. So what's next? Well, we've got restaurants now, RPM Italian, seafood, steak, and pizza at Portofino's. We've got a Vegas, DC. We've got five in Chicago.
We've got one coming in West Palm Beach, hopefully Nashville soon. So we're growing that. I just started filming a show called Dollar Bill, and it's going to be airing in all your airports on Reach TV. And it's a business talk show. And we just had Howie Mandel on. I had Dennis Quaid on. We've got a really great lineup. really trying to bring financial literacy to people.
So I'm really excited about that. And then hopefully we're going to be doing a lot more of the mega brands that built America, because I love doing that. It's one of my favorite projects to do.
New episodes of the mega brands that built America are now airing weekly on Sunday nights at nine, eight o'clock central on the History Channel. And the series is also available to stream the next day on the History Channel app, history.com and across major TV providers, video on demand platforms. It'll also be available to own on Amazon Prime Video or wherever you purchase your favorite series.
Bill, thanks for your time.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.
If you enjoy this podcast, please make sure to subscribe. And to stay updated on everything that the Action Catalyst is up to, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Action Catalyst Podcast and on Twitter at Catalyst underscore Action. And thanks for listening.
This is your host, Adam Outland. And outside of this podcast, I'm also the leader for a division of our company, Southwestern Consulting, and our division is the Southwestern Student Coaching Program. And that division, we started back in 2020 because the desire we had was to take all these skills that we've equipped executives with for
Over a decade, I've coached executives and managers and sales professionals on the skills, the habits, the motivation, and the systems to be successful in their job and in life.
And what we realized from working with 30, 40, 50-year-olds was if we could have gotten to them when they were in ninth grade, in middle school, in high school, and equipped them with the same things we're teaching them now, the ripple effects would be huge.
And so back in 2020, we decided to formulate a coaching program for youth, equipping youth with the same types of skill development that we typically work on with adults. We just apply it to their world.
And what that looks like is teaching them the study skills, the communication skills that they can use every day in the classroom and outside the classroom, coaching them on the mindset and the motivation of someone who's a top performer. And what does that mean? It means helping a young teenager create and craft a vision for themselves. Because without a vision, we perish.
But with a vision, we can be equipped with the motivation to dig into our study habits. We can see the connection between our future and the excellence that we have to form in our habits now to be successful in the long run. And we also work on the emotional intelligence.
It's how we balance our emotions and manage those emotions when they come up in a way that allows us to communicate effectively with others and to communicate with ourselves. It's about equipping young people with self-talk. That means equipping them with the language that they can use to better direct their thoughts and their mind to accomplish their goals and their aims.
And lastly, we equip them with the systems. That means for us, the tools, the time management, and the organization strategies to not just work hard in life, but to work smart. And when we combine all these different areas that we work with our teens on, what we find is that they form the habits early in life that allows them to achieve their goals later in life and even right now.
And so our passion is to equip as many young people across this world as we can And we're doing pretty good so far. We've got teens in seven different countries who have been through our coaching program to date. We've worked with over 400 teens, and we would love to be able to serve you as well. Here's how it works. If you want to investigate coaching, we start with a parent consultation.
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We have coaches who have come from entrepreneurial backgrounds and acting backgrounds, so we can pair them with the right fit for them. And then once they partner with their coach, they'll benefit from two coaching sessions a month to really zone in on their personal growth and their skill development.
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