The Apprentice

[Utah]

Wife forced me to sit down with her and watch "The Apprentice" (in the name of quality time).

Outside of some standard reality show Schtick, I thought the show was awesome and well worth watching. The comments on business, leadership, taking blame, and on corporate America were really strong.

The best part of the whole show was the guy named Sam. Two groups (the boys and the girls) had to both go out and sell lemonade. Sam tried to get a guy to buy a glass of lemonade for 1,000 and his team came down on him heavily.

The boys lost to the girls (who used a lot of T&A to sell) and they has to answer to Donald and his 2 top execs. All the guts started bashing Sam and it looked like he was on his way out. I was screaming at the TV (since I have so little in my life) "He is the only one on the team that gave the guys a shot at winning!". I was thinking this show is a sham. However, the execs. got together behind closed doors and they could clearly see what these young kids could not - that Sam was a risk taker, creative, etc. Exactly the kind of guy you want (Donalds two exec. seem exceedingly bright).

They then zapped the really smart guy who had no chance of ever being a true executive. The best part of that was when he was leaving he couldn't figure out why he was being zapped because he was so smart.

One last interesting part - the guys did well but they got plastered by the girls and they beat themselves up for losing. However, they got beat so bad that the guys, if they had real business acumen instead of just Harvard MBAs or equiv., would have done the calculation and easily seen how they lost.

[Jedi Poker]

Excellent show. Frankly, I'd rather watch that show than read a bestselling marketing, leadership, or management book. You get to learn a lot about how to get things done in that show.

Fitting decision for Trump to first fire the highest IQ guy (MD and MBA all rolled into one) with the least amount of leadership and human relations skills. The Presidency of a company is afterall what he is hiring for. Not an assistant.

I think a good question to ask when choosing which person to ultimately hire is, "Who of these guys and gals would make the best No-limit poker player?"

My top three picks are the two African-Americans (because they are both good listeners and organizers who have very good emotional control) and the blond real estate agent because she comes closest to having the same background as Trump. Sam will eventually be exposed for the whiner that he is.

A minor conclusion that can be made in this show so far is that men are generally better organizers but women are much better salespeople.

[B-Man]

Agreed. The show was MUCH better than I anticipated--it was very good.

[TimTimSalabim]

This show is definitely a winner. No surprise to me, though. I don't think Mark Burnett is capable of making a bad show.

[John Ho]

The Apprentice is the best reality show ever. It's much more interesting than the contrived challenges of Survivor which I stopped watching after season 1.

But I don't know that I'd say women are better salespeople. For lemonade on the street sure because guys will pay $10 just to get a kiss on the cheek from even an average looking girl. Guys had no chance.

I have to say I am not at all impressed with Sam. He strikes me as the kind of guy who is always dreaming big and going for the 600 foot home run that he is destined never to hit. If he was going for the 1K glass of lemonade because he realized that no amount of sales skills would compensate for the girls' sex appeal he did a lousy job of articulating that to Trump when he was getting ripped a new one by all his team members. Trump is looking for a leader...hence Same has no shot at winning this thing. Thinking big is one thing but you have to temper that with rational thought.

Next week's episode looks interesting.