Apprentice runner-up speaks at Hillel business event

By ADIR GLICK

Special to the CJN

MONTREAL - It’s hard to grasp what Lee Bienstock has been through over the past year. Already a success in the corporate world at age 23, Bienstock’s stock has risen to dizzying heights after he reached the final of last season’s Apprentice.

Now he’s touring North America to speak about his time on Donald Trump’s reality show, as well as about his vision of success in business and how – much to the acclaim of his many Jewish fans – he stood proudly by his Judaism on network television and went absent from the show during the High Holy Days.

Bienstock spoke Oct. 4 in Montreal at McGill University’s business school in an event organized by Hillel.

Bienstock, an Orthodox Jew, has strong ties with Hillel. At Cornell University, he was Hillel’s local vice-chair of internal relations, and he said that the team skills he developed there (and on the boards of other campus associations) were the most valuable things he learned in university.

Bienstock also praised his yeshiva high school education for preparing him to face the challenges of the Apprentice. At the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, Bienstock had to carry a double course load of Jewish and secular studies.

“I was pushed to the max. I was getting home at nine o’clock at night,” he said.

But more than getting him used to long days of work, he credits his high school experience with giving him another skill that helped distinguish him from the one million other applicants for the show, and propelled him to the final, despite his young age:

“I learned at yeshiva you should stick up for principle, and you should stick up for your beliefs, and you should stick for what’s really important to you.”

Sticking to his principles on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Bienstock drew the ire of some of his fellow contestants for taking the holidays off and not participating in those days’ tasks. Even his good friend on the show, Lenny, a Russian-born Jew, disapproved.

Bienstock said his decision to sit out the High Holy Days is still the subject of thousands of e-mails that he receives weekly – some criticize him for being lazy, while others praise him for taking a stand.

In any case, Trump was supportive of the decision, and Bienstock believes that was how he caught Trump’s eye. Bienstock knew that Trump appreciates loyalty and principles, so Bienstock said he tried to showcase those qualities.

From the beginning, Bienstock knew he didn’t have the depth of experience of some of the other candidates, or as fat a cheque book – some of the other would-be apprentices were multi-millionaires.

Instead, he played on his uniqueness.

During the screening process prior to taping, he was forthright about his precarious financial situation – he had just $212 in his chequing account.

And in a video that he made to apply for the show, he filmed simple moments in his life, such as working out at the gym and spending time with his Yemenite grandfather, who now lives in Israel.

During filming, Bienstock tried to differentiate himself from the crowd. In one task, which required his team to sell as many sandwiches as possible out of a 7-Eleven store, he abandoned the shop to try to sell in bulk to nearby businesses for lunch. He was unsuccessful in the end (his team lost on that task), but he still earned Trump’s praise.

Entrepreneurship and creativity in business are what Bienstock stresses in his lectures. And he believes that youth have a key contribution to make in business in these areas.

“Youth is the biggest factor which drives business,” he said.

As proof of his point, Beinstock noted that Trump hired him as assistant vice-president of Trump Mortgage, despite the fact he lost in the final.

As for the brashness that he was accused of displaying on the show, he said that on TV, personality traits get overblown.

“It was nothing more than Brooklyn toughness,” he said.