The Apprentice

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.

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.

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!