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!

NBC has announced the sixth season of The Apprentice will start on my birthday (January 7th). What a bummer for me, because I will be vacationing in Florida. I might miss the season opener…

The season opener will be a 90 minute special Sunday, January 7 at 9:30PM ET/PT. It will be airing regularly in the same time slot as Desparate Housewives (another bummer).

Anyway, to learn more about Season 6 of The Apprenitce you can visit NBC.COM.

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.

How many times has Carolyn Kepcher blithely agreed with Donald Trump’s decision to fire an Apprentice candidate?  It looks like now she knows how that feels.  Trump’s company has confirmed that Carolyn has been “let go”.  My guess is she’ll have no problem with income or with getting another job, if she wants one.

Former Season 4 Apprentice candidate Jennifer Murphy married Extreme Makeover dentist Dr. Bill Dorfman last Friday night. Their wedding was at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. More details can be found at People magazine.

I don’t remember much about Jennifer except that she got fired in the boardroom when Donald Trump decided to fire 4 people at the same time, because of how horrible the loss was.

Anyway, congratulations to the newlyweds! May they have a long, wonderful, and blessed marriage.

Donald Trump announced that he is starting up a new hollywood production company to produce a monopoly style reality tv show, where contestants try to become rich by developing real estate and at the same time causing other contestants to go bankrupt. You can read about it here.

Donald has hired Andy Litinsky, who was “fired” from the Season 2 Apprentice.

It sounds like an interesting reality show, but I am not sure I like the whole idea of making other contestants go bankrupt.

Anyway, you can read more here.

Season 2’s winner of the Apprentice, Kelly Perdew, is starting a subdivision in Montana. It seems there is some controversy around the project, because of the archeological and historic significance of the land. He intends to keep from developing parts of the land that are historically significant, but not all locals are happy about it.

You can read the full story here.

There’s another interesting interview with Lee posted here that goes into more of his decisions regarding religious practice and the show.

According to an interview with Lee on the Orthodox Apprentice blog:

Right after the show, Mr. Trump asked me to come over, and he told me to give him a call this week so we can meet up and talk about “being hired” by the Trump Organization. It feels great for my work to be validated by Mr. Trump. I started this whole thing so that I could learn from Mr. Trump and further my career. Even though I was the runner up, my goal can still be accomplished.

I for one think this is great news for Lee. Lee was very impressive for being so young. He and Sean are both extremely talented business people and if I were Donald Trump I would certainly try to hire both of them. We will keep you updated and let you know if Lee gets hired.

I know this recap is a little late, but better late than never…

I really liked both Sean and Lee. In fact, I was hoping Donald would hire both of them.

Anyway, in the finale the big question everyone was wondering was,

“What was wrong with Andrea?”

It turned out she had a nose bleed. She came back to the team and that really helped Sean. Otherwise, I am not sure if things would have worked out as well.

Anyway, on to the task.

Lee’s team had to put on a charity celebrity hockey game for the Denis Leary Firefighters Foundation. The preparation for the event was not good. Lee made the worst mistake an apprentice in the finals can make - He didn’t meet Donald Trump on time when Donald showed up to the event. I was very surprised at how unorganized the event planning was. It was really Lee’s worst performance of the show. You would think with all the celebrities the event could have been much better. In the end, the event turned out ok, but I really think it could have been better. It just lacked creativity.

On the other hand…

Sean’s team had to put on a Pontiac charity concert by the rock group “Barenaked Ladies”. The concert benefited the World Wildlife Fund.

There were a few minor glitches in their preparation, but they put on a great show. Their charity auction went better than Lee’s. Sean met Trump at the top of the building when he arrived via helicopter. Donald Trump made a big entrance by driving onstage in a brand new Pontiac G6 convertible. That was a great way to start the event off and things went smoothly from there. Sean can really thank his team for the great work, because if he had Lee’s team things would not have turned out so well. However, they both chose their teams…

George, Carolyn and Donald all expressed how much they liked both candidates, but in the end Donald said “Lee, you’re fired. Sean, you’re hired.”

I think Trump wanted to hire both of them. I even think he gave Lee a chance to be hired, by asking both of them which project they wanted to run. First he asked Sean (which at the time tipped me off that Sean would win) and then he asked Lee. They both chose the project in New York. If Lee had chosen the project in Hawaii, I think Donald would have offered him the job in Hawaii. Then again, after last year’s fiasco I am not sure if Donald would try that again.

The finale’s business lesson was “Take Credit“. I learned this lesson a long time ago at one of my first jobs out of college. Sometimes other people took credit for my work. It wasn’t often but it did get bothersome. I don’t think taking credit for your own work means foregoing humility. In my case, someone I worked with would take credit for my work. So I made sure to let other people know what I did at the same time or before letting that person know. That way, I got credit for the work I did.

That said, I believe that giving credit where credit is due is actually much more important than taking credit for your own accomplishments. I wrote about this a little bit in the business lesson titled “Watch Your Back“. I have found that when you give credit to others, they in turn will make an effort to give you credit for your efforts.

Well, that’s the last business tip for Season 5 of the Apprentice.

Sean!

Recap to come soon.

The Apprentice Finale is on tonight. Woohoo. Just like last year I would be happy with either candidate winning. During the season I really thought it was likely that I wouldn’t like either finalist. Somehow Trump managed to wind up with two really strong candidates in the end.

It seemed like last week Lee might be relying on Lenny too much. Lee is a really good leader, but I think his loyalty and respect for Lenny may hurt him in this finale.

I really like Sean, and expect him to win the Apprentice. I don’t think Sean would balk at Trump offering both him and Lee the chance to be part of the Trump organization. I kind of hope that is the way things work out, because I really like both of them.

Time will tell…