Saab Launches 'GUT CHECK'; Speaks to Catholic Men

Written Jeff DeMateo
3/2/2008

Catholic speaker Tarek Saab, former reality TV star from NBC's The Apprentice 5 and the President of T. Saab Media, was the hit speaker at the 2008 Answer the Call Catholic Men's Conference in Cincinnati, held at Music Hall on Saturday March 1st, 2008. Saab joined University of Cincinnati Football Coach Brian Kelly and Fr. Phillip Chavez  as the headline speakers.

Speaking to a packed audience of over 2,200 Catholic men, Saab interposed a very authentic Catholic message with great humor and stories from his past experiences in college, in business, and on the TV show, The Apprentice. "I have been coming to this conference for over ten years, and that was the best speech I've heard yet - and believe me, we've had some great speakers," said one enthusiastic attendee, who also brought his teenage son. "This is exactly what we needed to hear."

The Catholic speaker's message, summarized succinctly as "success in life and business begins by focusing on death," apparently resonated universally with the all-male audience. His book, GUT CHECK: Confronting Love, Work, and Manhood In your Twenties, which he officially launched at the conference, flew off the tables throughout the day. Joe Condit, Saab's manager from the Catholic Speaker's Bureau CMG Booking, was very impressed. "It's been insane all day. We sold about 300 copies of the book in the first hour after the speech. I've never seen anything like it. The line for book signing was about 100 people deep at one point. He really connects with people."

Saab will next speak at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on March 10th.

Book Description

You’re fired!

Only a few years into a career marked by dazzling early success, Tarek Saab’s life took a dramatic turn with his selection for Donald Trump’s reality show Coming-to-America , The Apprentice. Viewers soon noticed something unusual about Tarek. Throughout the chaos and pressure—including several boardroom showdowns with Trump—Tarek displayed a forgotten kind of manhood. In a new book, he shares his hard-won insights into love, work, and manhood and their source in a faith that is ever old, ever new.

The biggest problem by far facing men in their twenties is the crisis of manhood. Offering a completely new take on the so-called “quarter-life crisis,” Tarek describes his reluctant confrontation with career, relationships, and spiritual disillusionment and reveals the surprising truths he learned about what it means to be a man.

A distinctly modern-day Confessions, Gut Check is the wry and candid self-examination of a man whose life, despite its extraordinary twists, is full of lessons for ordinary young men. Tarek’s captivating tale reveals a young man with many talents and temptations whose saving grace is a relentless pursuit of truth and the daring to be counter-cultural. Gritty, comic, utterly believable—Gut Check is not the usual Christian fairy tale.

Gut Check is a manual for manhood lived the hard way. It is a book for men who never read and for men who think they have read it all. If you think you know what you really want, are you ready for a gut check?