The Apprentice
On Our TV

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.

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.

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.

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.

Carolyn Kepcher, who was recently fired by Donald Trump was hired yesterday by Microsoft. Carolyn will be working as a judge for a new contest Microsoft is running called “Ultimate Challenge”.

The goal of the “Ultimate Challenge” contest is to find the best business idea in the country. The winner will get $100,000 for the business, free retail space in Manhattan, and software to help start up their business.

Details of the contest can be found here.

I will miss Carolyn next year on the Apprentice, but it’s good to hear that she found something new to work on.