Days of the Roundtables: Business Insights with Bill Rancic and Attracting Talent in the Ferrous Space

From Wednesday, September 10, to Friday, September 12, traders, processors, and consumers across the U.S. and abroad will congregate in Chicago for the ReMA 2025 Roundtables. This two-and-a-half-day event features massive networking opportunities in tandem with expert market analysis.

Opening Keynote - Recognize the Opportunity and Reach Out

The first day of Roundtables kicked off with a keynote address from Bill Rancic. After bursting onto the scene on NBC's The Apprentice, Rancic built a lasting career as a successful entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business leader. From launching companies to co-owning the RPM Restaurant Group, he brings real-world insight into what it takes to lead, adapt, and close the deal.

Rancic can trace the beginning of his entrepreneur days to age 10 when he started a makeshift restaurant out of his grandmother's house. He identified a trait he has that's an important one for a business leader: the ability to recognize an opportunity, reach out and grab it, and then do something with it.

When thinking about his time on the first season of The Apprentice, he asked himself what separated him from the rest of the contests. With so many people who started the race, why was he the last one standing? Rancic said it came down to three things he did.

"I understood and embraced the term practical execution, I was agile and able to adjust, react, and change my management stye and strategy based on the task, and I understood risk; how to manage it, respect it, and convert it into success," he said.

He discussed one of the big questions of starting a business: why only some people are successful and most people who try don't succeed.

"It comes down to fear," Rancic said. "When we're born, we are only born with two natural fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Every other fear we have is learned."

One piece of advice he was given was to be a conductor, specifically the conductor of an orchestra. The conductor isn't an expert in how to play each instrument that they oversee, but they can still play them in harmony with one another.

"Many of us stunt our growth because we try to play every instrument and we aren't open to new ideas or changing our ways," Rancic said. "But the people who recognize that there are experts out there to help them are the ones who succeed as conductors."

He then shared three traits of successful business men and women that he's observed: they were good decision makers and didn't fall prey to analysis paralysis, they were creative and found creative ways to motivate their teams, and they had a "never quit, never make excuses" mindset.

"It's up to us to be agile and not use fear as a way to stunt our growth and to lift others around us," he said.

Ferrous Roundtable: Tariffs, Talent, and AI

Financial journalist and national syndicate columnist Terry Savage introduced the two panel speakers Bob Eviston, vice president and general manager of Nucor Steel, and David Stickler, CEO of HYBAR and Senior Managing Partner at Global Principal Partners.

"When we get caught up in issues like tariffs, we forget to look at the big picture," Savage said at the beginning of the panel. "Just as the printing press revolutionized printing and, more recently, the internet revolution changed everything, the AI revolution will change things like labor and jobs. We're entering an era where there will be a tremendous demand on resources and recycled materials are going to be a critical part of that."

Eviston began by discussing the need for the recycled materials industry to improve how it tells its story to the public.

"The perception if our business is still stuck in the early 20^th century," he said. "This isn't your grandfather's steel business anymore. It's cleaner and high tech. We've been flying under the radar when we look at attracting young talent into our business. Embracing AI will help but decarbonizing the steel industry will also be a great opportunity for people to rally behind."

He added that it would be important for the industry to reach out not only to colleges but to make the industry attractive to high schools, grade schools, and trade schools to tell the story, so they know more about the industry and understand all the opportunities that are available.

Stickler noted that when he started in steel 30 years ago, steelmaking was 80% brawn and 20% brain. But the landscape has changed, and he's found that those statistics have essentially taken a 180-degree turn.

The panel also discussed global supply and demand, the role of China, and the impact of tariffs.

"The Chinese government is fearful of civil unrest," Stickler said. "In many communities that the steel mills operate in, they are often the largest employer, so you're not going to see a local province cutting capacity and having former employees on the street with nothing to do, you need a different path to have the globe absorb some of the steel."

When asked about the implications for a company like Nucor that manufactures in the U.S. and must compete domestically, Eviston noted that the company welcomes the challenge to compete but doesn't want to have their hands tied behind their back.

"We want free and fair trade; that's the biggest challenge we have. If the total capacity for steel is 100 million tons and China has over a billion tons capacity that material will find its way somewhere so, how do you compete with that? It's a challenge we want to face head on, we want to be a country that makes things. If the easy money is to buy things and do a modular type of things, we don't think that's the long-term success for the U.S."

Both panelists agreed that the tariffs are complicated and often a double-edged sword. Stickler noted that in general tariffs stifle competitive behavior, negating the need to innovate or become more efficient.

When discussing technological advances within the industry Savage asked each panelist what, in their opinion, was the coolest innovation they've seen.

"Dropping copper out of the normal shredded stream is game changer," Eviston said. "What it allows our steel mills and others to pull has been significant."

What has fascinated Stickler the most is seeing the inside of one of his automated warehouses.

"They operate 24/7 and there are cranes moving the finished steel but there's no one in those cranes," he said. "It's safe, it's flawless once you get it dialed in, and it works. It does replace a handful of crane operator positions but because you have so few people in these small, rural towns it then allows me to pay average wages of over $200,000 a year."

Toward the end of the conversation Savage asked whether it would be important to "go retail" with telling the story of the recycled materials industry to move it forward.

"There's a lot of effort we're putting in. We have 32,000 people and that means 32,000 families that we're helping put food on the table and pay for college," Eviston said. "We have a great message about what we're doing in the space, and we have to continue to brand and build out and tell our story every day. It's a great story and we have to continue to pour out that energy."