New Ladder To Success

This season's, The APPRENTICE, returns with 18 international candidates hailing from as far away as Russia and England.

The show’s first task was to divide the contestants into two teams:

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

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

THE ASSIGNMENT: Each team gets a Goodyear blimp as a way to drive traffic to a local Sam’s Club. The team that sells the most Sam’s Club memberships wins the task.

THE WINNING TEAM: Synergy

FIRED CANDIDATE: Summer

LESSON LEARNED:

1) Do your homework

In sales, everyone knows how important it is to learn everything you can about people, such as your teammates and your competitors, so you know exactly what you are up against.

When Allie (30, Medical Sales Manager, Harvard M.B.A.) chose her team members, she commented, “I am not good with names…” She also mentioned she was pleased to be project manager, but admitted she would have liked a little more time to assess her team.

According to her bio, Allie is a top-notch business and sales professional. She should make an effort learn more about the other 17 candidates as the show progresses. She’d be better equipped to find the best candidates to work with and also what each one’s knowledge and skills are.

2) Put things in perspective

Even Donald Trump realizes when you look at all of the big events that happen in the world, doing business just doesn’t seem that important.

3) The age-old lesson of silence is golden

Summer (30, Restaurant Owner) was brought to the boardroom because she failed her task of calling restaurant owners to sell them Sam’s Club memberships.  She didn’t get fired for that reason. So why did Donald fired her? It was because she kept interrupting him during his speech. So often we feel the need to justify ourselves or “to be truthful.” The fact is, the truth speaks for itself and sometimes words are unnecessary. Remember Summer’s hard learned lesson!

Trump's Lesson of the Week: “Change the team”
Trump says successful people know when to pull bad people off their teams. In the show, there’s no opportunity to change the team members once the teams are formed.As in real life, you may discover a complete misfit in your team’s dynamic, and wonder what you should do. The choices are: 1) work with what you’ve got or 2) find another assignment. Sometimes, it may not be such a bad decision to choose the latter.

Related links:    The Apprentice on NBC, The Apprentice on SirLinksalot.net, The Apprentice - Reality TV Website, and The Apprentice Lesson #1 – Never Interrupt The Donald