Back to basics: Business lessons from The Apprentice final

John Cheney, CEO and founder of Workbooks.com, analyses the grand final of The Apprentice 2011 in which Tom Pellereau emerged victorious.
 

Well, the final episode of The Apprentice aired last night and although Lord Sugar ended up choosing Tom as the winner, I was highly underwhelmed by the contestants' business plans. It seemed like they'd come up with the ideas in the middle of the night instead of well-thought out and executed business plans that could potentially change their life. And sadly, the contestants, although obviously bright and ambitious, made some really basic mistakes:

 

Although none of their efforts overwhelmed me with originality or invention, I did feel that each of the individual candidates possessed some great skills. Jim was a natural born salesman, Helen was great at organising and execution, Tom seemed like he had some interesting ideas and Susan had bags of enthusiasm.

 

The beauty of this is that their skills were actually all pretty complementary. Individually none of the candidates had it all - a great idea, professionalism, beaming attitude and work ethic wrapped into one. In fact if I had been Lord Sugar, I think I would have kept my money in my pocket.  He might have been better off pooling the four of them together as a team and investing his money that way.

 

The first hour of the final was fairly basic; a profile of the last few candidates that didn’t stir up any jolting emotion for me. However I have to say the second hour was a revelation, it was fantastic viewing for any entrepreneur. It was a master class in how not to launch a company. 

 

Unlike the earlier programmes in the series which mainly consist of watching people muddle through a task, making mistakes and bickering like school children, the last hour was informative, useful and demonstrated that launching a successful business is actually pretty difficult. In fact I think everyone who is considering starting a business should take many of the lessons from The Apprentice to heart.

 

The show should serve as a warning to anyone considering external funding for a business; you need to cover all the basics:
 

These are questions anyone thinking about going into business should analyse and pick apart before even opening their mouths. Starting a company is difficult enough; you might as well help yourself and have a solid foundation first, besides you’ll look a lot less silly in the long run.

 

But really, in my opinion, the biggest takeaway should be: It’s really difficult for one individual to be great at everything, so be honest with yourself, know your strengths and then find some other people who can do the things you can’t.