The Apprentice

This Sunday, Season 6 of the Apprentice starts and it should be a lot of fun. They are filming this season in Los Angeles, but that is not the only new plot twist for Season 6.

 For one, the contestants on the winning team will get to live like Trump in a really nice mansion.

 On the other hand, members of the losing team have to sleep outside in tents!  They will have port-a-potties, and out door showers to deal with. Yuck! 

Also, the winning project manager continues as project manager until his/her team loses. The winning project manager also gets to help advise Trump on who should stay or go from the losing team. Wow!  The winning project manager will sure have a lot of power. I imagine everyone is going to be fighting to be project manager the first week.

I like the new twists, how about you?

PS. I will be on vacation during the first episode, so I may miss it. I hope not!

I am still on vacation in Florida, but I did finally get around to watching Sunday’s episode of The Apprentice last night. While Donald didn’t have a business tip this week, I have come up with two of my own that I will explain at the end this post. First, a couple thoughts on this week’s show…

I really, really enjoyed watching it. If you are looking for a recap check out Yahoo’s official Apprentice page which has an excellent recap of the Apprentice Season 6 episode 1. In fact, Yahoo’s official Season 6 Apprentice page is loaded with great Apprentice information.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot twists. It will be interesting to see how living in a tent is going to affect the performance of the losing team. The winning project manager gets a HUGE advantage in the competition because they get a behind the scenes look at how the board room works. That has got to be a great advantage when they reach the board room.

Now for the two business lessons:

1. You Can’t Sell Without Customers
The losing team was so disorganized. They lost because they didn’t have big signs saying “Car Wash”. How basic is that?

2. Always Upsell
The winning team worked really hard and they barely beat the losing team. The losing team was so disorganized and took forever to get customers, but they did one thing right… they upsold their customers. Instead of just selling 10 dollar car washes, they tried to upsell everyone on detailing. The upsell almost won it for them. The winning team would have won in a land slide if they had concentrated more on upsells, instead of pure volume.

I think the losing team has a good chance of winning next week as long as the project manager from this week (Frank) doesn’t get involved in the decision making. They had a lot of strong members. The ones who stood out the most were James and Tim.

Other than the project lead, Heidi, you didn’t really get to see enough of the other team to tell whether anyone stands out as a frontrunner. Donald really seems to like Angela, the Olympic gold medalist from women’s ice hockey. He almost seems a little starstruck. But if you read her bio, you can tell why he might be.

Lastly, go check out Ivanka’s blog, it’s a pretty interesting read.

Buddy TV has an excellent interview with Martin Han Clarke who was the first person to be fired from the Apprentice this season. I found Martin’s final words very interesting:

Don’t forget to come visit GiveHimAChanceTrump.com, where you can vote me in at the end of the season.

Interesting that you can vote someone back in at the end of the season. Quite frankly, I don’t expect it to make a difference in the final results of the show, but I guess anything is possible.

Well, this is the second week in a row that Donald hasn’t given a weekly business tip. I am starting to wonder if those are a thing of the past.

This week each team’s task was to design 3 men’s swimsuits and 3 women’s swimsuits for a fashion show. The team that made the most from orders of their swimsuits would win, but there was a new twist…

The winning team doesn’t compete in next week’s competition!

It was fairly obvious early on that Carey’s swimsuit design was a make or break design, and I was fairly sure it would be a “break” design. Sure enough, they lost again– this time because of the horrible design of Carey’s swimsuit. I really thought that the project leader (Nicole) should have recognized how horrible it was. In fact, I probably would have fired both Nicole and Carey, but that’s just me.

While there are many lessons from this episode, the two main lessons I got were:

1. If you are trying to sell to a mass market, make a product that will appeal to the masses. The losing team made a product that only 1 percent of the population “might” be interested in buying. That just didn’t cut it. If you are going after a niche market, then you have to target that niche. But if you only have six products, and you’re targeting a mass market, then you can’t afford to “waste” one of your product choices on a niche market.

2. If you are running a business, don’t let someone else push a bad idea down your throat.
There were several people who were unsure of Carey’s idea, but he pushed the idea hard. You can’t let that happen in business, unless you want to fail. Don’t mistake a passionate idea for a good idea. Know your market research and stick to it, no matter how excited someone might be about their pet project.

Buddy TV did an interview with fired apprentice wannabe Carey Sherrel.

Carey answered a question that I have been wanting someone to ask:

How big of a disadvantage was it for your team to compete against people who had been getting pampered inside the mansion?

It’s a big disadvantage. When we first got there it was very koom bay ah-ish; pulling out the guitar by the bonfire and whatnot. But after sitting in the heat all day and not being able to do things, and just sitting in the backyard, you become disgruntled and irritable. We had some fun moments, but after awhile it was like “I really don’t want to be here right now. I really want to be inside with the air conditioner.”

I would imagine that living in tents is going to make it much harder to win against the team living in the mansion and sure enough Carey says it is.

I found this quote real interesting:

What are your plans for the future?

I am, oddly enough, launching a swimwear line. Blue Motion Squared, BlueMotionSquared.com; it’s launching February 1. It will be board shorts, by the way, just so everybody knows. And I’m kind of challenging Trump on this. If the short is a loser, it’s a loser, but I will definitely be showing my quarterly earnings to Trump.

Ummm… dude none of the buyers would buy your swimsuit. In fact, one of them wrote that it was unsellable. I guess if he markets them to a certain community he might sell some, but I don’t expect to see them any major outlets.

Anyway, I am really looking forward to see what other twists “The Apprentice” has in store for us next week.

You know what?

I was hoping to write one or two business lessons from last night’s show, but there were just so many mistakes I don’t know where to begin.

Last night, the winning team Kinetic got to take the day off and have a relaxing day at the hotel, while the losing team “Arrow” had to split up into two teams and compete against eachother.

Michelle lead one team and Aaron lead the other team.

Aaron’s team did a fantastic job and did just about everything right.

On the other hand, Michelle’s team came up with a horrible idea, had all sorts of planning and marketing issues, and just did a miserable job.

Before Donald could fire anyone, Michelle quit. Michelle would have been fired, if she had not quit. It’s kind of too bad, because I enjoy watching the boardrooms. In the boardrooms, I learn about some of the things that Donald Trump looks for in a leader. However, I think last night’s board room might have been pretty quick.

The funniest thing about the episode is that I think if James had been on Michelle’s team, that Michelle’s team would have won. James came up with almost all of the winning teams ideas. I think if James hadn’t come up with all those great ideas, they might have been doing a tour of all the places famous people died (Aaron’s suggestion), YIKES!

I can see why the team has been losing. I think they have a chance of winning next week if James becomes their project leader, of if they let James come up with all the ideas.

What did you think of last night’s show?

Team Arrow finally won!

It’s kind of funny that it’s their first time to win, since Tim and James are at the top of my list to be the next apprentice.

Surya spent one day outdoors, how lucky is that?

Heidi and Kristine were even luckier than Surya. Either Heidi or Kristine should have gone home, but Marissa did a terrible job in the board room. Heidi did a terrible job of marketing and not putting anyone in charge of sales was also a big mistake.

On the other hand, Kristine’s idea of mixing fruit with chicken in a fast food dish was a horrible decision. It reminded me of the mass marketing mistake that Carey made. In the fast food industry you are trying to appeal to a large audience, adding fruit to the dish made it nearly impossible for them to win. That coupled with poor marketing and no sales plan guaranteed their loss.

Next week is the SuperBowl, so the next Apprentice will air in two weeks.

If you are looking for a good recap of last night’s episode of the apprentice, go check out Yahoo’s recap by clicking here.