I don't have much business acumen. Although the corporation my accountant got me to set up, Steinacopia Inc., has brought in six figures over the last year and a half, I have yet to figure out how to get any of that money out of the Steinacopia bank account. It is perhaps the most poorly run business not yet purchased by Time Warner.
So you'd think I wouldn't have applied for the sixth season of NBC's "The Apprentice." That's because you don't realize just how much I like people to see me on television.
Because this is the first "Apprentice" filmed in Los Angeles, it's the first one I have had a shot at. Instead of being required to rent out real estate or create ads for a private jet company, like the previous Manhattan apprentices did, I figured I'd just be walking up to people and asking them to give me 10% of their salaries.
At 10 on Friday morning, I went to the Globe Theater at Universal Studios Hollywood, where I joined more than 700 other capitalists waiting to be interviewed by Donald Trump — 25 of whom were so excited they had been there since 5:30 a.m. I instantly realized I should have worn a suit. And brought a resume. And gone to business school.
I was put at a table with eight other applicants, only two of whom had been Miss Beverly Hills. When Trump sat down to interview us, he asked us to give our names and say something about ourselves. I told him that I was "Joel Stein, a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm."
Nobody reacted to this. The business world, I was learning, was one tough place. Either that or it's even more solipsistic than the media industry.
The guy to my right, Ryan Smith, told Trump he had made $60 million during the Internet boom and lost it all, keeping only the Rolex on his wrist as a reminder of his past success. It was perhaps the closest Trump had ever come to crying.
Then the Donald asked us to discuss whether a business should have a rule against dating in the workplace.
Heidi Androl, a sales manager for a company that sells inlet barrier filtration systems for helicopters and is a costar of the film "Playboy Wet & Wild: Slippery When Wet," said she believes that dating co-workers is wrong.
"If you meet some guy you're really attracted to, can you say you wouldn't do anything?" Trump asked. "Do you have that much self-control?"
Androl assured him that she did.
"Even if his name was Mr. Trump?" I asked.
"I've heard of stranger things happening," Trump added.
Androl stood her anti-workplace-romance ground. I do not imagine she got a callback.
As the discussion wore on, I found myself sweating through my shirt from the pressure. Could I really navigate a business world in which I would be in important boardroom meetings, discussing dating, while sitting between two former Miss Beverly Hills?
When Trump asked us to name someone at the table we'd vote off, and someone we'd nominate as team leader, I was surprised to get no votes either way. I was born, it seems, to be middle management. This may be, it seems, how my own corporation thinks of me as well, despite the fact that I'm my only employee.
When our 10-minute session ended, I asked Trump how I did. He said he was impressed with my persuasive arguments for my pro-dating stance — but that I should have worn a suit and brought a resume.
Then the famously germ-phobic tycoon, known for bowing instead of shaking hands, offered me his hand. When I asked him why, he raised an eyebrow, looked me up and down and shrugged: "What am I going to catch from you?"
That's when I knew I had no chance.
Afterward, Shelley Mahoney, a real estate investor I picked to vote off, told me that I stood out as a candidate. "The rest of us talked like executives," she said. I think this was supposed to be a compliment.
And Natasha Pavlovich — former Miss Beverly Hills; Miss Yugoslavia; Miss Passion Venus Legs, Los Angeles; Jennifer Garner's mom on "Alias"; an investor in Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company; and a participant in the founding of the Serbian city Slobomir — said I was in the top 60% of our table. Perfect for middle management.
Still, when I left the room, I decided I'd be a better candidate for "The Apprentice" than I had imagined. Because unlike being a spouse on the "The Bachelor" or surviving on an island on "Survivor," being an entrepreneur — as Trump himself proves — requires the same kind of gaping narcissism that makes people want to be on camera.
I don't think "The Apprentice" is ever going to leave Los Angeles.
