April 21, 2004
Britney does the Donald
the net is great in it's ability to react quickly to culture. On-line animation companies came up with Apprentice parodies very quickly. This is a good one from AtomFilms - The Britney Apprentice.
Posted by Martin at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2004
Cuban says Kwame is the smarter one...
I mailed Mark Cuban to ask if he really offered Kwame a job. Here is his response...
Very interesting take. Fox News also reports that more than 30% of americans say Trump doesn't have enough money to pay them to work for him. I don't believe he would be a kind boss. Maybe Kwame IS the real winner. Saying he was able to game the whole process into a second place finish though is a pretty big leap.
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Guy is smart. He didn't want to win, he wanted to finish 2nd.
Think about it, run a construction project or live like a celeb and choose from a ton of options
The only thing the winner could have done that was smart was to turn down trump. Walk away, be a hero, or have a 9 to 5 job.....
Kwame won, bill lost...
Posted by Martin at 2:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Sam a shill for Samsonite?
Where did goofus Sam find $250,000? I guess it really wasn't that amount of money, but The Donald thought it was live. Why did he say "I want to give you this SAMSONITE briefcase of money"? How much did the commercials during the finale cost? By the way I loved the Yahoo commercials. I bet more than $250,000. Pretty slick. I hope The Donald doesn't hire that goofball though. Maybe to whipe the toilets.
Posted by Martin at 1:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Apprentice: Bill, I picked it...
Well me and 29M of my friends watched the finale last night. Everyone knows that Bill won. But how many people picked him? This morning on the talking heads shows many people bemoaned the fact the each week was really a firing event, not a hiring one, so those who flew under the radar were rewarded. I believe that Kwame did in fact fly under the radar. Rarely team leader and never the outstanding idea guy on any team. Bill led more than twice as much as Kwame. Bill was always on task and very involved. Especially in the restraunt management episode. By the magic of blogs, you can see that previously I picked Troy, Amy and Bill as finalists. I got two out of three. And picked Bill over Amy after the (pathetic) interviews. As the two events went along it was clear that Bill was in control of his and his team was motivated. Kwame was just floating along with unmotivated and in fact vengeful and outright hostile employees. Bill deserved the car.
So Bill gets the job. He also had to choose between building a new building in Chicago and managing a golf course in LA. The Donald gave him 4 minutes to decide. I said he would take the Chicago project for two reasons. 1. it is in Chicago where Bill is from. 2. It is a 3 year construction project with lots of experienced people to do most of the work. The LA golf course would be managing a P&L in the near term with very clear success/failure criteria. Less air cover. To start, take the more air cover.
Good job Bill.
Posted by Martin at 1:37 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Apprentice: Kwame gets hired by Mark Cuban?
Watching Fox News this morning and Kwame was on. He said his best job offer so far was last night at the after party. Mark Cuban wants him to manage some of his investments. I e-mailed Mark to ask him if he wanted someone with such a hands-off approach and such a thin understanding of people that he voluntarilly picked Omarosa! Funny that her server is down today. You get an "access forbidden" message when you go there. She must not be paying her hosting bills! But this is about Kwame and Mark. Mark what are you thinking? Maybe trying to get some of the Apprentice ratings for your show?
Posted by Martin at 1:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 22, 2004
The Apprentice: Omarosa's ouster...
This week it finally happened. Omarosa is gone. I will get to the how and why, but at this point I want to reflect on the process and how closely (or not) it is "reality". All of these "reality" shows are victims of a critical flaw: They are TV shows. What we see is edited and organized for OUR ENTERTAINMENT. Now, the Apprentice appeals to me for some business reasons (a chance to understand how The Donald makes decisions), but at times it is clearly conflicted between making good business decision and making good TV. Good drama. Early on in the show, I think that was clearly part of what kept Sam around so long. He was entertaining. After he left, it was up to Omarosa to be entertaining. And she was in a chip on my shoulder, holier than though, Louis Farrakhan sort of way.
This has been stuck in my outcue for two weeks. It is now old news. Basically I am happy to see her gone. And dumbfounded at how much celebrity you can create in this world with little substance.
Posted by Martin at 1:44 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
February 27, 2004
The apartment swindle?
Yahoo! News - "Apprentice" Veers from Reality This article claims that the winning team in the apartment contest actually rented to someone who was a plant. She had already been promised the apartment by the manager at a lower price and only agreed to the higher price to get on TV. And in the end will pay the lower price. So which team really won? Well the ploy succeeded in getting Tammy fired which is a good thing!
Posted by Martin at 2:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Apprentice Episode 8: Ereka explodes...
Right up front I will admit to being a little bummed. Omarosa is still there. The way the game is set up, a poor performer can sit around on a good team and if the team wins, there is no fear of being fired. I guess the numbers will always get to you though. This week Omarosa was STILL complaining about her head hurting. The other team members nearly laughed in her face at her faux drama. In addition to continuing the whining, Omarosa was a terrible sales person. She constantly undercut Amy's attempts to sell large quantities. When the prospect made an objection, Omarosa went straight to the bottom with "how bout just a couple of cases today". One case is $8. It doesn't even pay for the time to sit there. Amy got so annoyed she started kicking Omarosa under the table during meetings. That went over well.
So Trump says he wants to get into the water business. He believes his "brand" will transcend. Now I don't know what his mug does to make me want to drink the water, in fact I don't equate Manhattan with great water. His mug with the signature swooping hairdo is front and center on every bottle of "Trump Ice". The teams were Ereka against Heidi. Both teams did something I thought was stupid. They took multiple people on sales calls and they went primarily to retail locations. The task was to sell as many pallets of the damn stuff as possible. Hadn't anyone heard of distributors? I would have spent all my time there. And I would have sent one person on each sales call. You could make five sales calls instead of two. I also would have spent more time on the numbers, like Bill did. The first sales meeting with Ereka and Bill at a retail restaurant, Ereka's pitch was "we are trying to create a buzz" around the water. She was still trying the "smile and wear a short skirt" mode of selling that served her so well in the lemonade challenge. But this is selling to businesses who aren't really brand loyal and just want to make money. On the next sales call Bill pointed out that he could provide Trump Ice at half the wholesale price of their current water. Of course he got the deal. When it came time to add up the paperwork and present it for accounting, Ereka lost it and was totally frazelled. She stuttered and shook with fear that things weren't in order. Basically letting her emotions get the better of her.
Over on the other team, Troy was the "closer" and had two great insights. First, sell to distributors. He sold one five pallets. I was trying to figure out if that is a truckload, but it doesn't matter, it was the largest sale by far. His second insight was that you could write a PO for X number of cases per week for X weeks and you could effectively multiply your orders. It worked in a couple of accounts. Of course Troy and Heidi out-sold the retail focused Ereka by 50%.
So comes the boardroom. The team politics got hot and heavy. For some reason team leaders who loose have gotten it into their heads that they need to tell the people who they will be taking to the Boardroom before it happens. I don't think this is a good idea. It reflects the leader's desire to be liked more than their intelligent decision making powers. Leaders who are driven by a desire to be liked will always fail. So Ereka takes Nick and Bill. Nick was supposed to be such a great sales person and he totally choked. He didn't know his customer and didn't sell much. Ereka said she was taking Bill only because he was there when they lost the distributor order. She let Katrina off because she "didn't step up", but it looked like she was letting her off because she was a friend. Of course Katrina said glowing things about Ereka to re-enforce the feeling. I predicted from the start that Ereka would get fired because she was a bad sales person (relying on sex to sell) and she lost it under pressure. It was between Nick and Ereka, it was obvious that Bill shouldn't be there. Nick got feisty and didn't really do himself any favors, but in the end Ereka was much more at fault. Good riddance. I hope next week either Nick or Omarosa go.
My bets are on Troy, Amy and Bill to be finalists.
Posted by Martin at 12:08 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 24, 2004
The Apprentice Episode 7: Tammy's turmoil
Behind again somewhat. It is in large part because I was totally let down by the show last week. The producers are getting very good at the trailers. The week before all you heard from The Donald was "this was the toughest one yet". So of course you want to watch. What is going to be so hard? To cut to the chase, Tammy is fired and she was the obvious choice from the beginning of the show. I mean Episode 1 show. I have threatened Alex to apply for the show just to redeem Seattle and Venture Capitalist. Those two categories fielded two of the weakest contestants on the whole show. Tammy was shielded in the comfortable womb of the all Women's team for four episodes where her ineptitude, bumbling, and general incompetence was overshadowed by the efforts of the other superior players. David the VC was outed on the first episode as a cerebral academic with little experience in reality. Well I have a little over a week to put together my video for next year's show...
Last week Heidi and Omarosa got into it. The other participants feel for and support Heidi and know Omarosa for what she is: A cold hearted killer. This week the teams had to re-balance by one and Omarosa's team took Amy over to Protege. It was a good call as I think Amy has a future. So the teams lead by Katrina and Troy were given the task of choosing between two apartments in need of restoration and renting. The one who got the greatest uplift in rent was the winner. At the outset I thought Katrina had the upper hand because she is a real-estate professional. But Troy proved more tricky than a country fox. Troy ended up with the better apartment, the one with more potential. The result of the test was set from there. A bit unfair if you ask me.
Katrina actually showed the first signs of something that has been sorely so far: the ability to delegate and manage people. Not just your team, but other resources. So far the teams have been treating this like Survivor where the only people who are available for the tasks are those on your team. Does Donald really want a President of one of his companies to be moping the kitchen, painting the walls, and doing all the work themselves? Katrina got a general contractor to come over and do the bulk of the work very quickly and cheaply. The first use of leverage that I have seen. Unfortunately it was not enough as their apartment had a higher starting rent and therefor a lower percentage uplift was possible. The potential for uplift was also artificially limited by the short marketing time available. Basically one day. The teams had three days to do work and rent the apartment. In real life you would have done more marketing and hopefully seen more tenants before renting.
Omarosa was whining the whole time about being hit on the head by a piece of drywall and used it as an excuse to not do any work. Tammy spent her time randomizing the contractor and distracting the team from their work. I want both of them to go. Tammy is gone, let's hope Omarosa is next.
Posted by Martin at 7:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 13, 2004
The Apprentice: Episode 6: Omarosa's revenge
Ok, so I am going to try to get these up quicker. Last night, to no-one's surprise, Omarosa was elected project leader. She knew she would be forced into it, so she tried to make a gallant stab at it and "volunteered". I believe her team was trying to "Sam" her. She is a total power bitch and knows it. Smart enough to know when it is time to put up though. So Omarosa takes the reigns of Protege Corp. Over at VersaCorp, Bill "Cigar of the Month" Rancic got the call. Basically he was one of two who had not been the lead yet, so I guess they rock/paper/scissored for it (they didn't give us the details).
The task was a new and different one. Solicit personal experiential donations from NYC celebrities for a charity auction to benefit children's cancer research. The auction was in two days and the ten (five each) celebrities were already lined up. This task was a little wimpy because the celebrities already knew they were going to give something. The Donster had already signed them up. They do things like this all the time. The eager beavers just had to show up and ask. VersaCorp, led by Bill, would work with Regis Philbin (of "Live with Regis and Kelly"), Rocco DiSpirito (of NBC's "The Restaurant" fame), Carson Daly ("Last Call with Carson Daly"), Tiki Barber (NY Giants) and Ed Bernero (An Executive Producer of "Third Watch"). While Protégé, with Omarosa at the helm, would work with Russell Simmons (Hip Hop producer; co-founder of Baby Phat), Kate White (Editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine), Nicole Miller (Fashion Designer), The Fab Five (the entire cast of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy") and Isaac Mizrahi (Fashion Designer).
Now this is a task that I know something about being on the board of the Pike Place Market Foundation and having to solicit donations for that organization. The hardest part is getting people to donate any time at all. So the Donster had already done the very hard part. I guess this is the only way it could have gone with such a short timeframe and having all these young'uns from out of town and all. Since the celebs do this kind of thing allot, they have a standard "package" that they usually give. No-one on the teams seemed to grasp this. In addition, no-one on the teams bothered to talk to any customers! Imagine that! What do people actually like to BUY at these celebrity auctions? Even talking to the auctioneer. Or the charity organization that was putting on the event. "What sells well?" seems to me like an obvious question. Say a celeb has two or three standard things they do for this kind of event, why not get the one that tends to sell for the most? The children could have even asked the celebs themselves. But narry a word about any of that. A critical flaw that as the Donster I would have berated both teams for. Simply going to these people and suggesting stuff is no way to maximize the package. These guys had ZERO market knowledge.
So Omarosa organizes the troupes and heads out to ask for stuff. She makes the mistake (in my mind) of taking everyone to every meeting. Better to divide and conquer like Bill's team did. Less imposing for the peeps. Omarosa had a reasonable strategy of having a lead and a follow for each ask. But she had no understand of what to ask for or how to pair her team up with a celeb, so there were horrible miss-matches. Omarosa didn't even figure out how to say Isaac Mizrahi's name until AFTER she met him. Most asks were uneventful with the exception of Isaac Mizrahi where Jessie totally botched it. She talked slow like he was a child. He commented on it and she kept doing it. She oversimplified it. He hated her ideas and asked for others. The other team members had to pitch in to get anything. Troy came through with another "good ole boy" trick which was surprising in it's ingenuity and cleverness. They were on the way to see the "Fab 5" from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. So Troy is wearing a suit and takes off his belt. He knows this is going to set the gays off and he is right. They hone right in on it (so to speak). This breaks the ice as does his country drawl and they go googo. Put together a very cool event (probably a first for them).
The excitement during the asks was over at VersaCorp where Bill did a great job of leading the team, but Tammy from Seattle kept embarrassing everyone from here. She was on some other planet. Not only was she not on the same page as her team, she was on another planet. She kept asking for totally out of this world things. All her team could do was panic every time she opened her mouth. She asked Carson Daily for a round of golf with Tiger Woods. He was visibility insulted. What about ME? He asked for other ideas and Tammy came back to the golf three times! With Regis she suggested flying a group to the bahamas or something. Three days! These people were down for a day in the city at most! Easiest is a tag-along with what they are already doing. Next is maybe a dinner or something. Tammy was embarrassing. On the cab back and for awhile in the apartment, it seemed like there might be a love connection between Nick and Amy. That is bound to start up sometime.
At the auction, the prices which things went for were not really a reflexion of the team's ability to negotiate things from the celebs. It was more a reflection of how much the people had to drink. This dis-connect in performance was overlooked though. Both teams together raised $75K which is a respectable sum. But Bill's team got $40k while Omarosa was left behind with $35K.
So Omarosa was back in the board room. She did the indecent thing of telling Jessie that she would be there as well the night before. Telling her what a bad negotiator she was. I was convinced that Jessie would be fired. She has no back-bone. The Donster doesn't like people who don't defend themselves and I knew Omarosa would walk over her. And then she choose Heidi to go there as well. Two power bitches against the "why can't we all get along" mouse woman. It was no contest. Omarosa was very condescending and even RUDE to the others. Heidi put up some fight but kept saying "I like Omarosa". Jessie hardly raised her pulse above sleeping. Trump tried and tried to get her to defend herself. She wouldn't. He didn't like Omarosa's treatment of the others, but he disliked weakness more. Bye bye Jessie. It is getting down to the hard core bitches now. Going to be fun from here...
Posted by Martin at 2:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Apprentice: Episode 5: remix
A week behind on my Apprentice reviews. I guess because Episode 5 was so unremarkable.
This week, with the men down to 4 guys left, Donald had to do a "corporate restart" and rejigger the teams. Nick got the lead and picked a team. Nick had been shamed into being team leader for basically bailing on the team during the last task and acting like he was above it all. Donster basically told him to put up or shut up. Kristi, the blonde from Santa Monica took the helm of the other team. Nick did a good job of picking strong people. Kristi picked the weakest people but the "nicer" people. Basically her friends. It was an early sign of trouble. Funny because for all the previous episodes, Alex and I had noticed how often the producers would interview her. We speculated that she would be a finalist. The restaurant business is hard and very crazy day to day. How wrong we would be...
So the task was to set up a stand at the flea market and sell something. The company with the largest sales over expenses would win. They were given $1,000 seed money. The trouble started for Kristi's team right away. They went to China town and looked at the junk stores for cheap stuff that they could sell at a markup. But don't they know that anyone from NYC would know the stuff was cheaper in chinatown? They basically picked up a bunch of stuff retail at a store and tried to sell it at a fleamarket for a markup. There was no value added to the product other than location. Stupid idea. Kristi wanted consensus on the product, pricing, and every aspect of the location, etc. It was clear from the start of the day that she was paralysed by fear. At times during the selling day she just sat there staring straight ahead not able to talk. She totally bonked. They were inside and all the foot traffic was outside. Few people were buying the overly marked up trinkets. They ended the day with lots of inventory and their display fixtures.
Nick actually stepped up to the plate very well. He went with Ereka's (hottie) idea to make tee-shirts and other custom created clothing. Just tie ribbon on them in interesting patterns. Nothing too complicated to manufacture (they had one day), but unique. High value add. The team also was very parsimonious on their setup. They picked an outside location. Which when it rained in the morning looked bad, but in the afternoon when it cleared up and all the people were outside, it proved the right decision. So people bought. It was a unique product that you obviously couldn't get anywhere else. The price was reasonable. But Nick did the SMARTEST thing with half an hour to go. He basically said "EVERYTHING GOES" at any price. All product, all display materials, everything for any price. He didn't want to have any work in progress inventory at the end of the day. Better to have cash on the balance sheet than inventory which doesn't count against the goal. This was the difference in strategy. And put them over the top.
Of course Kristi went to the boardroom. She took Heidi because she had a bad attitude. I forgot who the other was, I believe Omarosa. Omarosa also had a bad attitude all day. In the boardroom Heidi and Omarosa were very staunch in their defense of their actions. Kristi just sat there and took all the responsibility for everything. Put up no defense. She was a total wimp. Trump even tried to get her to defend herself but she wouldn't. She was on the verge of crying the whole time. Trump fired here. He was surprised because she had done such a good job as a team player up to that point. But when put in leadership, she was a deer in the headlights. Did nothing. I called it and the Donster did it. Whew, finally got one right.
Posted by Martin at 1:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 4, 2004
The Apprentice: Episode 4: Waterloo for the Men
After the women won the last challenge, Donald said "I am beginning to wonder if I will ever hire a man again?" The Women have just taken it to the poor, disorganized men. But last week they had Sam as a liability and this week they don't. So the elect Kwame as team leader. Now some people wanted Nick, but he was a crafty bastard and got Kwame to take the job by suggesting him first and in a very positive light. Nick made the astute observation that two of the last three firings were team leaders and he wanted to get rid of Kwame. This is starting to sound like Survivor!
So the task is to manage Planet Hollywood in Times Square for a night. Again men against women. The team that gets the largest percentage improvement on the daily top line gross as compared to the same day the year before wins. At the outset again I pick the women. It is simple, they just need to unbutton their shirts and sell booze, the highest margin deal in the place. That turns out to be exactly what they do! They work it. They come to this realization about half way through the night after trying $5 off coupons and prowling the line for half price theatre tickets, but people receive so much of that crap in Times Square that none of it works. So they fall back to sex which has worked well for them in the past. In fact they start drinking with patrons. And the REAL manager sees the girls drinking on the job and tries to say something about that not being up to "planet hollywood standards" but hell, the money is flowing in!
The men have half the team members and again start off trying to do all the work themselves. I am totally surprised that none of the teams have figured out the basic idea of management called delegation. What about management leverage? Where does it say that only your team can work? Why not hire people? Or you in fact have a complete staff or the restaurant. Why not leverage them with management skills? Donald wants a President of his company out of this, not a waiter or a shooter girl! I get a glimmer that the men may be on the right track when they institute an hourly incentive program for the wait staff. But they don't go far enough. The goal is only top line. Old Don didn't say nutt'n about bottom line. So I personally would have gone hog wild on expenses to blow out the top line. Alex and I agree that a free food buffet with drink specials would have been the ticket. After a long day and the first part of the night, the men realize they aren't getting people in the door. Nick ckecks out and looks bored. He complains openly. Troy has the idea that Kwame should sit at a table and sign autographs. Not that Kwame is famous, but people are stupid. And they are. LOTS of people line up when they have no frigg'n idea who Kwame is. Bowie is in charge of merchandise, but doesn't sell much. Finally he resorts to interrupting people during dinner. Now where would you spend your money for a dinner interruption? A chick with cleavage who will do a shot with you? Or a chubby guy with a southern accent and a $20 Polaroid? You get the picture.
Of course the men loose. They make something like 4% more than last year, but the women are more than 30%. They are off to play golf. While there Don and the mega bitch manager take them to the woodshed a little for relying too much on sex to sell. Some women are pissed that "Donald has a problem with me being beautiful". They are missing the point. You need beauty AND brains. So far they have not shown much brains beyond their breasts.
So the men go to the board room. Kwame as team leader and he brings Nick for being a slacker and Bowie for not making merchandise sales. Kwame did a passable job as team leader with a plan and a good understanding of where they screwed up (not selling enough booze and merchandise). Nick whines about how he didn't like the plan and would have done better and how he just didn't want to put his name on the lame efforts. Bowie just says "awe shucks". Bowie gets fired. Not so much for doing anything totally wrong, but for not being special in any way at all. He is a happy go lucky guy who is just happy to be there. That is not enough. You gotta have guts and got to make some hard decisions. Don says he wants to see Nick be team leader next week. I would have picked Nick to go this week. But again, Donald shows that he is a bit of a cowboy and likes to give big talkers the chance to put up or shut up.
I called the fact that Don would have to re-order the teams and the promo calls for a "corporate reshuffling". It should get more interesting now.
Posted by Martin at 11:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Apprentice: Episode 3: Sam finally gets it
I wrote a much longer and more insightful review of this episode, but it seems that my blog posting software ate it or something, so I will just say the obvious: ABOUT TIME! In Episode 3 the men elect Sam to be the leader knowing that he would screw it up. And he does. The task was to negotiate the best price for a list of items to be bought in one day. He runs the guys around town on wild goose chases to purchase items. The women handilly beat the men by rightly targeting the two items on the list that had the most margin, the Calway golf club and the leg waxing. Finally
!
Posted by Martin at 10:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 20, 2004
The Apprentice Episode 2: Jason
So last week was Episode 2, still men against women. Jason Curis, the affable slum lord hunk was the men's team captain. Tammy Lee, the Seattle whiner during the first show as appointed Women's team captain in part because she thought she could do such a better job. The task was to develop a new marketing campaign for NetJets. It was not as obvious from the get-go which team had the advantage here.
Again, the women started out in turmoil and the men went right on task. Each team got a photographer, video person and some graphic design tallent to help produce their ideas and pitch for the CEO of NetJets. I thought Tammy Lee would be a disaster as a team leader and the start looked that way. She was so impressed with their ability to use sex to sell lemonaide that she wanted to take that path as well with the jets. So she designed a campaign that photographed the aircraft in all sorts of ways that were falic and sexual. One picture of the engine hole was subtitled, Can you fit in? Another has a middle aged businessman with a sexy flight attendant sitting behind and above him on the plane wing with "Get on top" as the caption. When the girls walked into pitch the deal, they also went with flight attendant outfits and lots of leg. Their idea was that the CEO would love it or hate it, but either way it was a BIG idea. When they finished I thought they had made fools out of themselves and acted like silly little girls. The CEO was noticable uncomfortable with all the sex and hated their idea to use direct mail.
The men went with a much tamer campaign. It showed a sucessful businessman getting great service and avoiding the delays of commercial flights. Very straight forward value and benefit sale. They came in in suits. After they pitched, I said "they nailed it". It was a much more practical campaign. I would have chosen the men.
Again I was wrong. The CEO of NetJets summed it up very well: The men were steak and the women were sizzle. When you buy an ad agency, you buy the people. You want to buy sizzle. You can always tone down the sizzle, it is hard to sex up steak to sizzle. He chose the women. He is obviously right.
So the women go back to the suite and the men back to the board room. Again Donald asks everyone to rat on everyone else. Everyone hated Sam again for going to sleep during a task and not even completing it. Jason the team manager was there as well for failure to meet with the client before the pitch. Those two had obvious complicity in the failure. Nick Warnock was thrown in there by Jason just because they needed three. Donald realized immediately that Nick didn't really need to be there. So it was between Jason and Sam. I though Sam would go this time for sure. But old Donald threw out Jason. The reason was that Jason made a bad judgement in not going to see the client before the pitch. That was an active decision to do something stupid. Now Sam fell asleep and may not have contributed, but he did not do anything really wrong or destructive to the cause while Jason did. Again the right decision, with me missing the mark. Well there is always this week.
Posted by Martin at 1:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 19, 2004
The Apprentice Show 1 review...
The Apprentice has gotten me. I am somewhat ashamed that I sat the first week with 27 million of my fellow Americans and watched this new twist on Reality TV. During the first 15 minutes I switched over to Tivo and set up a seasons pass. This is real drama! Here are all these young people from all over the country trying to impress the self-styled King of Capitalism. I am not sure you would want Donald's hair or his garish apartment, but I am sure many would want his money.
Being a venture capitalist, it is in part my job to try to figure out who would make a good CEO and who would not. That is the whole purpose of this show! So I watch and try to figure out who will likely win the weeks competition and who I would fire in the end. Now this task is complicated by the fact that you only see the highlights of what went on and not all of it. Also, the question of what Donald Trump would do and what Martin Tobias would do are two different things. But it is a fun mental exercise to see if the criteria by which I make the decision match up with Donald's. I don't expect a 100% correlation, but I do expect to understand the logic behind my decisions and hope to figure out the logic behind his (if different) and see if there is anything to be learned. In this case there is MUCH to be learned and that is the surprising AND fun part.
OK, Episode 1, the Phantom Menace. We get introduced to the plot and the characters. The producers did a good job of mixing up MBAs with corn fed bootstrappers. To keep things interesting they threw in a few wild cards that begin paying off right away. The first task Don gives them is to sell lemonade. Men against Women. Each team gets $250 bucks and one day. The one with the most money at end of the day wins. I like the idea of pushing people to do something they have never done, never thought about doing. It sees who is creative and can think under pressure. But lemonade on the streets of NYC? Of course the women are going to win. That was my first thought, sex sells. Then the teams get started and the women are totally confused and disorganized. The men get right out there and start selling. So I think the men actually have a chance. But they choose a crappy spot by the Fulton Fish market and sell their drink for only $1 per cup. Sam, the loose cannon, tries to sell one cup for $1,000 and goes down in flames. Dr. David Gould, the venture capitalist runs after people on the street hounding them with different (increasing) prices. He looks like a sports mascot. At the end of the day they have doubled their money, but are dispirited.
The women, meanwhile are being caty and have trouble finding each other. But they choose an uptown location and start selling their lemonade for $5 per cup. Kisses extra. they all tie up their shirts to expose their belly buttons and take their shoes off. Of course they make 4X their money! The women won and all got to stay even though the girl from Seattle was a disaster.
So the first thing I was wrong on was thinking the men had a chance. The second was on who would get fired.
So the men go to the board room to face Donald Trump hatchet. He uses a very interesting technique of having everyone in the room talk and say who they thought was responsible for the failure. It gets people to say difficult things in front of their peers. Very interesting. Donald was fishing for who was most responsible for the failure of the men's team. I was rooting for Sam to be killed. I thought Don would pitch him for being an ass. He chose three to keep, David Gould, Sam and of course the team leader Troy. Troy led the team poorly. David admitted he was not a good sales person and would not be a good leader. Sam just was an asshole. Everyone on the team voted for Sam to be fired.
Donald went for Dr. David Gould. He said because he didn't step up at all. Sam he said was a loose cannon and he didn't know if he was going to be a disaster or a star, but was willing to give him another chance. I called it wrong because I forgot that Trump is a gunslinger. He is a risk taker. He is not a cerebral thinker and intellect like double PHD Dr. David Gould. He doesn't have any time for people without guts. Or for people without discretion. So he let Sam live another week just to see how it would turn out and he fired the person who was the most wet noodle. The VC. ouch.
Posted by Martin at 3:30 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack