This wasn't a big plan.įeloni: In 2005, you ended up on "The Apprentice" when Martha Stewart was hosting it. I would have been a great lawyer, but I didn't want to go to school for more years. For years people have told me I would have been an excellent trader. I think the upstairs, downstairs of the racetrack, there are wealthy sheikhs and blue bloods and people with last names like Firestone and Whitney and Vanderbilt, and then there are the people on the backside, where I would hang out, who feed the horses.įeloni: What attracted you specifically to the entertainment world, as opposed to having power in, say, Wall Street or something like that?įrankel: I didn't know anything about Wall Street. Gambling is the base, and I'm definitely a risk-taker and a gambler, and people call me fearless. Growing up at the racetrack is a very action-filled place. I saw so much as a very young child that I think it matured me in an unnatural and unusual way.įeloni: How did that result in who you became as an adult?įrankel: I don't know. But I was always responsible, as weird as that sounds. I used to go into the city from Long Island by myself when I was 14 years old, to go to the Palladium. Going to nightclubs when I was 13 and 14. Going to the betting windows when I was young. I take it to the edge.įeloni: Your father was a racehorse owner?įrankel: My father and my stepfather were racehorse trainers. I expanded too quickly in the Princess Pashmina business, but I always had to take everything to a 10. Then I started distributing them to stores. Then I had to take that to the next level and get a booth at the Magic Show, which is the apparel show in Vegas. By the time that my multicolored pashmina arrived, I had had them all sold and orders for more, to celebrities like Salma Hayek and Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts and Kevin Costner for his girlfriend, his wife, or somebody like that.īut I was selling them to everybody at these pashmina parties. I took a very risky move and sent $6,000 that I did not have to India to a stranger. I was one of the largest importers of pashminas in the world.įrankel: I discovered these pashmina shawls, which were these coveted items that most people didn't even know what they were, including myself. It wasn't that I was really making any money. I was always figuring out some way to just get by. I've done healthy meals delivered to people's homes. I worked later as a natural-food chef running different restaurants. Later, I worked at a clothing store in New York City. Then I ended up also charging guests to come, because it was an expensive party, and I'd have to pay for all the cleanups, and my parents didn't kill me at the time.įeloni: You even used a high-school party as a business opportunity.įrankel: Yes, I did. When I was 13, I think, I wanted to have a party at my house, and so I worked at a bakery first to be able to pay for the party. In high school we wanted to be able to have this big nightclub party, and so I rented out a space and charged the people in my senior class to get into that space and had a nightclub. Business opportunities are everywhereįeloni: Did you have any indications that this was a path that you would end up on when you were a kid?įrankel: I've always had an entrepreneurial streak in me. That's when the hamster wheel really starts to get going, once the match gets lit. Once the idea is born, that's when really my brain starts flying with all the ideas, late at night, and adding ideas, and thinking about how things can be changed and different, and products and formulations and taglines. I don't spend a lot of time sitting around just in the plan. I'll have the idea, and then I'll go and do it. I'm not as much of a thinker about it as I am a doer about it. Frankel: I don't think I think of it that way.
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