New Ladder To Success

The APPRENTICE returned in this episode with 17 candidates meeting Donald Trump, former Apprentice Bill Rancic, and Ivanka, Trump's daughter for their second task.

TEAM SYNERGY:  Allie, Sean, Tammy, Pepi (project manager), Andrea, Roxanne, Brent, Stacy, and Michael.

TEAM GOLD RUSH: Tarek, Dan, Bryce, Charmaine, Leslie, Theresa, Lee (project manager),  Summer, and Lenny.

THE ASSIGNMENT: Teamed up with the Gillette Company to promote the "Gillette Fusion razor system" through a text-messaging marketing campaign. Whichever team got the most cell phone customers to text message a key word to Gillette, would win the task.

THE WINNING TEAM: Gold Rush

FIRED CANDIDATES: Stacy and Pepi

LESSON LEARNED:

1) The Early Bird catches the Worm

As much as Team Gold Rush spent an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a keyword at the beginning of the race, they managed to defeat Team Synergy. Gold Rush generated a total 683 text messages compared to Synergy’s 458 text messages. Gold Rush won the task by almost a 50% margin. Their strategy – Early Bird. Gold Rush got up early in the morning and arrived at Time Square before any one from Synergy showed up for the task. Who would have known the old proverb still worked?

2)  Location! Location! Location! 

Most retail businesses require good accessibility and visibility. For example, a donut shop should be located on the "going-to-work" side of the street. On the other hand, a liquor store should be on the side of the street with traffic going home from work. The selection of your location will have an overwhelming impact on your chances for success.  In this case, Gold Rush selected a great location where they were able to catch people standing in line for tickets.  What would those poor folks do other than participating in this endeavor?

3)  Leaders learn to take charge!

Being a leader is tough. But the job gets tougher when there is a difficult person (or two) on the team. It gets worse when the situation is unchangeable by any means (at least during your reign). What can you do? Well, there is no easy answer. One thing for sure, all eyes were on the project manager, Pepi, when Brent was firing his ideas during the brainstorming session. Everyone wanted Pepi to handle the out-of-control Brent by sending him back to their room. At that particularly moment, Pepi seemed to be disoriented by the confusion. Some members even commented that they lost respect for his leadership ability. Perhaps Pepi should read the book called “201 ways to handle difficult people” by by Alan Axelrod, James Holtje

4) Know your brand image

Companies spend millions of dollars to create their unique brand images. When Team Synergy decided to wear bathrobes to attract and promote their keyword, it did not appeal the panel.  Remember who you are trying to impress.      

5) Why be a pain? 

Trump's Lesson of the Week: “People are strange”

Trump says life if full of different people.  Sometimes you’ll see a person, they’re dressed beautifully, they look great, they’re sharp, they speak well, everything’s perfect but they’re losers.  Then you’ll see somebody that doesn’t look as good, they don’t have the right clothing, they don’t have the right face, they don’t have anything right, but they turn out to be winners. Time shows that they turned out to be winners.  You never can judge a book by it’s cover.

Related links:    The Apprentice on NBC, The Apprentice on SirLinksalot.net, The Apprentice Blog, The Apprentice 5 - Episode 02: The Razor's Edge , and Business and Real Estate