It started at age 10, when he turned his grandmother's kitchen into a makeshift pancake restaurant and included a childhood of lemonade stands, lawn mowing and snow shoveling.

Later, as a student at Chicago's Loyola University, his love for the water prompted a boat-washing and waxing business.

"Everyone thought we were crazy for doing it," Rancic, 35, said Wednesday in an interview. "The next season, those people that were laughing at me were working for me."

Nobody's laughing at Rancic now.

The Windy City native and self-made millionaire - in Orem to speak at the Big Business and Technology Expo at Utah Valley State College - ranks as one of the nation's most successful young entrepreneurs.

He serves on the board of directors for two multimillion-dollar companies and wrote a New York Times best-seller, You're Hired.

"Bill is always one of the most sought-out speakers around the world," said Shawn Finnegan, president of Net Marketing Alliance, the company that paid for Rancic to speak at UVSC.

Oh, and one more note: Rancic is set to marry Italian beauty and E! News anchor Giuliana DePandi in September.

"A good entrepreneur has great instincts," he said.

Rancic's brief stop - he flew to New York later in the afternoon - wasn't his first in Utah. His work with Olympic skier Picabo Street and the National Children's Alliance brought him to Park City in January for a fundraiser. Before that, Utah's powdery slopes coaxed him out several times before. Besides those trips, his connection with Utahns comes primarily through the television screen.

His home is Chicago, where he grew up with three older sisters and two teachers for parents. His family's middle-class status compelled him to launch his own little businesses here and there.

"I'm a born entrepreneur," Rancic said. "I often joke that all entrepreneurs have a little bit of ADD [attention-deficit disorder] in them - they have to have a lot of things going on."

What started with pancakes at 10 years old ended with cigars - as in Cigars Around the World, the business Rancic founded out of college that now has eclipsed $70 million in sales.

At about the same time Cigars was merging with another company and spilling into wholesale distribution and retail shops, Rancic learned about Donald Trump's new show.

A friend's mother called and told Rancic she had signed him up for an interview. Rancic went and made the casting cut out of 215,000 applicants.

Before filming, Rancic was told he needed to disappear for 13 weeks without anyone knowing where he was. Producers came up with this story: He would be in Havana buying tobacco fields and could not be contacted.

"These were Hollywood producers, and that was the best they could do?" Rancic recalled. "What's worse, my friends believed me. It was remarkable."

The fairy tale continued with the self-proclaimed underdog hearing The Donald say, "You're hired" in the show's first-season finale.

Rancic said Trump has been good to him since.

"He's a very upfront guy," he said. "You know where you stand with him - what you see is what you get."

Apprentice fans will recall Rancic's favorite task on the show: the episode when he turned a startling profit by slapping ads all over the pedicabs of the Manhattan Rickshaw Co.

Rancic earned a one-year contract from Trump after he was hired but has stayed on as a consultant.

Now, on top of traveling and making speakes, Rancic sits on the board of directors for both Cigars Around the World and Loretta Foods, and he dabbles in real estate.

When time affords him, he tools around the countryside on his motorcycle or races to the gym for a quick workout.

For now, though, his focus is on one of his biggest-ever projects: His wedding.

And, who knows, some day Rancic could be rearing another born entrepreneur.

toddh@sltrib.com