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September 16, 2004

The Apprentice 2, Episode 2

The Apprentice 2, Episode 2

Most people thought the young guy would be fired. He knows he is a marked man. Bradford got a get out of jail free ticket, but his team members didn't think he deserved it. They thought they won despite him rather than because of him. I tend to agree. Apex choose Kelly, the military guy as team leader, solid choice. The guys tried for distributors quickly and knew they would get killed by the women on a direct sales on the street deal. Good decision to break the team up into flavor team and sales team (led by Wes). The women had Ivana as project manager, but she comes from the analytical side of Venture capitalists and put people off immediately with diagrams of what price is. I bet she has an MBA rather than real business experience. A common problem. Ivana went for too much velvet glove, group hug decision style. Kelly, the Military man was the polar opposite setting time limits for each discussion topic. I think this task will be like the Trump Water task last year, the one who gets the largest wholesale orders will win. I wonder if they will again measure is gross revenue, not margin. Anyone can make it on gross sales. The key is margin. Here is the water post from last year.

For Mosaic, Wes was head of sales. Got alot of hang ups. Didn't generate any meaningful wholesale leads. Oops, down a couple notches Wes. Interesting ice cream tidbit: 14.5 hours from mixing through flash freezing to get a product. The Dunkin doughnut swat operation, was very cool. Swoop in, take all the doughnuts and leave crying kids behind. Very take charge action. Make a decision and just do it. They had 25 minutes to get the ingredients and made it. The sales team didn't really get many leads, they only did leads to restaurants. They should have expanded the net by calling ice cream retailer stores, small deli's, etc. Wes didn't get any orders, so they decided to go for a direct sales approach. Raj and the other guys on the "sales" team didn't seam to do anything either which was a big mistake. They should have had different sales people going after different customer types. In the end, they went for a "part of sales go to charity" retail strategy, tried and true. Decided on two carts in Times Square. Then the men left all their strategy out in the open on the tables and computers. BIG MISTAKE. Why show your competition your game plan? Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. Good to get on the street at 7:30am. The food squabble "don't eat all day to save expense money" was silly. Don't eat? Raj being Hypoglycemic? Weird. I like his clarity of vision though "I am right, he is wrong". Raj came up with breakfast ice cream pitch (doughnuts!), good idea. The Leukemia pitch was a good one as well. Raj continued his weirdness and kooky action. Pamela was very weak, she is not energetic at all. This is the second task where she felt it was beneath her. They hired attractive scoopers, VERY good idea! The first team to leverage hiring people, about time! They had a higher cost problem with the ingredients (doughnuts) and the contribution to the charity. The part they forgot about was that the contribution to Leukemia Society might put them below the profits of the other team. So I guess they are being measured on net profit after all expenses, good idea Donald. I guess since the teams had much more control over the COGS and selling expenses than during the water task last year, they moved to Net profits. Good decision. In the end their profit was $2,700 on a higher expense basis.

For Apex. Team havoc. Lots of ideas, lots of writing on the whiteboard with no organization. Utter chaos. Ivana liked to hear herself talk and spent a lot of time, too much time on the ideas for flavor. Didn't have a flavor or any idea of ingredients until the last minute. The CEO had all the ingredients which was very lucky. What if he hadn't? Apex spent the whole time on the flavor and didn't do any sales. Stupid. They went on the phone to do the sales and came up with the idea of hiring temps (Stacey J). The rest of the team was hated it and wondered why she was going behind their back. I liked the bullishness of it. Stacey J may be annoying, but she has balls. None of the other teams ever used leverage (yet). When they got back to the loft, the women read the men's plan and made a plan to compete directly knowing the competition strategy. I don't like Times Square as a place to sell. Have you ever been there? Thousands of people trying to sell you crap. No-one listens to any pitch. Remember the teams trying to rope people into Planet Hollywood last year? The women want to sell to the line waiting for discount tickets, good idea since people are just waiting there, but a very popular strategy. Will be interesting to see if the men try to poach the line. Bradford wanted to sex it up for street sales, the women generally didn't want to play that card which is bad. You need some hook for sales and the women have a built in one. They can choose not to use it (fine), but you need to replace it with something. The location they choose got hijacked by another street vendor with a permit. Ivana backed down immediately, bad move. They spent too much time debating where to move. Did not do good location analysis. Bad planning. The picture of women dressed in business attire in high heals pushing an ice cream cart down the sidewalk of Manhattan caused a few double takes. All that time spent moving around was taken from selling. No-one executed on a distributor strategy, but with only one day it was probably not very realistic. I got to believe that they could have sold to ice cream stores though. What does a tub of premium ice cream sell for? Go to the ice cream stores with a new flavor at the same price as their existing ones. At least one team should have split their sales force into different channels including bulk. Why does every team put all sales efforts in the same channel? Doesn't anyone there have any concept of sales channels? Bradford was the hustler guy. It made a difference. In the end Jennifer convinced some of the restaurant guys to come to their street team. It worked. Finally someone was selling whole tubs. I didn't think they had it in them. It was too little too late though and only netted them $2,472.

The Boardroom. The men hustled better, their gross sales were much much higher. The men even admitted that the red bliss flavor from the Mosaic was better. Mosaic lost because they started selling too late and were disorganized. In the boardroom should be Ivana, Stacey J and I don't know who. Ivana did a very crap job on leadership and organization. Wow, VCs really need better representation on this thing. The lightening and storm clouds leading to commercial were a nice touch. The ads have been hyping "the best boardroom ever", I wonder if they are going to try to use that every week, it is going to get old. I have got to say, I would fire Ivana. And not just because The Donald hates that name. The carts were not selling for three hours and it was an organization problem. The Donald said it would have been ok to use sex to sell. Carolyn pointed out that Mosaic didn't do anything as a selling angle. Apex had better outfits and the Leukemia pitch. Bradford gave up his free pass and it was a STUPID move. The Donald said so. He did a good job so he shouldn't have to be in the Boardroom. The Donald asked everyone who they would fire, that is different this week, usually he only asks a couple people. Most said Stacey J. Two or three, she choose two then the Donald challenges her and she says three and brings in Bradford because he was stupid to give up his exemption. So Stacie J, Jackie, Ivana and Bradford. Humm. Since Bradford gave up his exemption, that changes things. Do I think it makes him more friable than Ivana? Not really because he did it out of confidence. He volunteered to go to the women out of confidence. He may be too cocky, but he was not bad at this task. He was energetic. With half an hour more of selling I bet the women could have won. Ivana could have gotten that out of better organization.

Wow, this is hard. Wow, he choose Bradford. His reasoning was that Bradford's decision was impulsive and stupid and if he was running a company it could have killed it. Even though he was the best one in the room, The Donald believes it is worse to have a loose canon than an disorganized one. I disagree. I would rather have to reign in someone who acts out of confidence than have to micromanage or clean up after someone who can't make a decision and underexecutes.

So I am 1 for 2, batting 500%.

And one of my four choices for finalist has been fired. Kelly did a great job as team leader and has moved up in my book, but not a clear finalist yet.

Pamela, Ivana, or Stacey J should be one of the next to go.

PS. Trump, the game. Surprise, another brand extension. Very good Donald. I bet you will sell a lot at KMart. Too bad the guys who created BurnRate didn't have your brand.

My choices for top finalists are now:

Raj
Jennifer
Elizabeth

My choices for most likely to go sooner rather than later are:

Jennifer C. - you can't become a billionaire by mimicking how a real one eats shrimp cocktail!
Kevin - No experience, not very swift.
Andy - Too young and already deemed a "project" by The Donald. May be kept for a few episodes for entertainment, but not long for this life.
Stacie J. - Too unstable. May be kept for entertainment, but never a finalist.
Pamela - too impersonal, cold and very unavailable as a team member and leader
Ivana - God I wish they could recruit some Venture Capitalists with operating experience instead of eggheads. She is an organizational disaster.

Posted by Martin at September 16, 2004 11:41 PM

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