Donald Trump - the Apprentice

[Bigbusiness]

I did see the end of it but can't remember the name of the bloke that won it. I was laughing so much it didn't seem to matter. One of the sacked contestants gave Trump $250,000 to take him on. How stupid can one person be?

They said there is going to be a UK version. Hope Richard Branson is the boss but I suppose they will go for someone more Trump like.

 

[Trader333]

The winner was Bill which (in my view was well deserved) although the whole series was really a "Isn't Donald Trump Great " appreciation.

The UK version is with Alan Sugar so it will be very different and filming started in late August so it will be next year I would think before it is screened.

Having previously been involved in corporate level management, the thing that struck me most was that there was nothing particularly outstanding about any of them when compared to many other Project Managers I have known. Also the politics involved were very clear, a lot of backbiting, outright lying and all sorts of manipulation were being attempted. The aloofness of some of the contestants was also staggering and showed a total misunderstanding of what leadership is truly about.

Funnily enough the two finalists avoided much of the aforementioned characteristics which I am sure Mr Trump was quietly monitoring during the 13 weeks of the show.

When you consider that there were 215,000 applicants which were narrowed down to just 16, I was disappointed that there were no really outstanding high flyers other than 1 or 2 people.

That said I very much enjoyed the show and look forward to the UK version.


Paul

 

[dc2000]

Bill ( the cigar entrepreneur ) won

Kwame was second with the consensus that although very well educated he was too text book

Sam offered $250,000 to take him on and give him a shot CRAZY !!! maybe not when you consider the position had a salary of $250,000, a $90,000 S class and full exec package.

Bill chose to take charge of the new Trump building in Chicago but he will have a lot of supervision from the main man.

 

[dc2000]

And for those interested in the new series or what Troy, Sam and Co are dooing now

http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Apprentice_2/where/bill.shtml

 

[Bigbusiness]

Alan Sugar, the man who made his millions selling some of the worst products I have seen. That should be fun. I still remember the frustrating experience with my Amstrad 64. Makes me laugh when people have a go at Bill Gates. They obviously don't know how bad things could have been.

 

[wisestguy]

my choice would be troy .

bill is a classic corporate man , slick , smart and downright sneaky . he showed his true colours when he broke his word when they played cards . call me old fashioned but I believe in keeping one's word.

The relevence to trading is that it is a totaly different world to the " corporate " slickers , where sneaking , grovelling , and crawling up to the right people are all you need . I include banks , brkoers and most of the financial community in this .

no amount of trading ability will save you . I knew a guy in S'pore who was with a famous old US bank , and he make US 100 m on forex in '96 , but he was given the boot , because he made a comment contrary to the bank's politics of the day.

In real trading , where you are on your own or maybe a real hedge fund , the reverse is true , no amount of corporate grovelling will save you , if you can't make money from the markets.

 

[wisestguy]

I just watched ep2 of season 2 , and it was really interesting and had a relevence to trading .

In the boardroom , where 1 of the losing team was to be sacked . Only this time , a chap who had immunity from sacking due to his previous role as leader of the winning team , decided that he would waive his immunity .

his reason was that he wanted to prove to his team that he was willing to take the same risks as everyone else , immunity or not . He felt that he would not be fired due to his relatively good showing even on this losing task.

DT seemed to be very irrate at this action . The losing leader duely picked him as 1 of 4 who could be fired.

they had the usual debates , DT's irritation hightened , the 4 were sent out , he consulted with his lieutenants , who both did not recommend Brad . DT did not seem impressed .

the 4 returned and , he summised what his feelings were , he clearly said Ivanna and Stacie were the worst there and that he thought Brad did the best job of of the 4 . he then surprised everyone and proceeded to fire Brad .

now what was interesting was that here was a business icon making a decision based on emotion , he thought that Brad make a bad call and that that was " life threatening " as DT put it .

but was this really so ? I don't think so , Brad reasons were not so crazy as DT might have believed . he was actually setting a good example of not wanting to shirk responsibilty and to take the consequences of their failure .

this was not so reckless , as Brad thought he did pretty well at the task , and indeed DT agreed . so why sack the guy ? he sacked just because DT had this emotional bug about giving up immunity .

to me that's bad business , he sacked Brad on the wrong criteria , which had nothing to do with business and more with prejudice . ego w ' ing as some might say.

And I tell you what, the same goes on in most vanilla financial institutions. It's not about who is the best trader . not about who can make the most $ trading as it should be .

it's about management E W'ing . that's all . that's why they exist .

 

[ducati998]

It ain't over 'til the man in the toupee sings

Is Trump over?

The Apprentice was a brilliant career move for Donald Trump, setting off a virtuous cycle of egomaniacal profiteering. The TV show brought free advertisements for his Atlantic City casino, promotions for his apartment projects in New York and Chicago, endorsements, and book deals. That moneymaking publicity, in turn, fueled the TV show.

But now, after a glorious year for The Donald, this cycle is turning vicious. Ratings have fallen, and Trump has engaged in increasingly strange publicity stunts that don't bring him any income at all and that may end up costing him money. It turns out that Trump's desperation is almost as compelling as his success.

In its first season, which ran from January through April 2004, The Apprentice was a runaway—and surprise—hit for NBC and Trump. The finale attracted a massive audience: an average of 28 million viewers. Trump moved to exploit the success and build buzz for the next season, churning out books like Stephen King. The spring of 2004 brought Trump: How To Get Rich and Trump: The Way to the Top: The Best Business Advice I Ever Received. The same month, Trump began to appear in advertisements for Visa. His assistant, Carolyn Kepcher, rushed to get Carolyn 101 into print for the fall of 2004, and it did well.

Despite all the buzz and collateral promotion, viewership dropped sharply in the second season. The September 2004 debut drew 14 million viewers. The finale, an excruciating three-hour extravaganza, drew fewer than 17 million viewers.

Trump clearly felt pressure to do something drastic to attract attention for the third season. But he didn't have a best-selling book to plug or a new endorsement gig. So Trump decided to do the promotional work himself. He married his longtime companion, Slovenian supermodel Melania Knauss. And apparently, the only weekend Mar-a-Lago was available for the nuptials was in late January 2005, just when Apprentice 3 was about to start.

The Apprentice's third season was marketed as "street smarts vs. book smarts," but the conceit failed to capture viewers' imaginations. Ratings fell again. And so as plans were laid to expand the franchise to include a Martha Stewart spinoff this fall, Trump careened from moneymaking endorsements and book deals to cheap publicity stunts.

On May 12—the same day Episode 16 aired—Trump appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews (synergy, baby!) and slammed the design of the Freedom Tower proposed for the World Trade Center site. The following week, Trump engineered a classic example of what historian Daniel Boorstin labeled a pseudo-event. On May 18, Trump held a press conference at which he announced he could rebuild the Twin Towers—even though he doesn't control the site and couldn't hope to raise the funds to rebuild there. This time, the non-NBC media world played along. (In the New York Times, Jennifer Steinhauer sneaked a fine bit of sarcasm past her editors: "It was clearly a coincidence that Mr. Trump held his news conference a day before the season finale of his network reality show, The Apprentice.") The same week, Trump also succumbed to the ultimate in celebrity abasement—talking about your relationship on Larry King Live, which he and Melania did on May 17. All to no avail. The finale of Season Three attracted just 13.7 million viewers, as realityblurred.com notes. It got trounced by CSI.

While the TV franchise is listing, the collateral products are tanking. When King asked Trump how his new book of golf tips is doing, Trump responded: "It's selling like hot cakes." Yeah, like hot cakes at a convention of people suffering from celiac disease. The only thing in the six figures about Trump: The Best Golf Advice I Ever Received is its Amazon.com ranking.

So what does Trump have planned for this fall? Well, he's already starting an online university, which will offer neither degrees nor grades. And we can probably expect more desperate publicity stunts—perhaps a crisis in the marriage, to be discussed at length on Dateline. Or maybe he'll show up in Baghdad to critique the reconstruction of Iraq and offer his own expertise, an event sure to be covered by the Today Show.

And as Playbill notes, Trump, TV producer Mark Burnett, and Broadway producers Barry and Fran Weissler plan to turn The Apprentice into a musical for the spring of 2006. (That sound you hear is New York Times critic Ben Brantley sharpening his talons.) This strikes me as the most desperate move of all. Broadway is a notorious cesspool for outsiders' capital. Besides, the Great White Way already has a long-running smash hit that's a tribute to Trump: Hairspray.


Daniel

 

[Splitlink]

Alan Sugar, the man who made his millions selling some of the worst products I have seen. That should be fun. I still remember the frustrating experience with my Amstrad 64. Makes me laugh when people have a go at Bill Gates. They obviously don't know how bad things could have been.

Alan Sugar and Bill Gates aren't in the same league. Alan Sugar's company just made whatever could be sold cheap in Woolworth's. Gates is a clever software designer who made a product for the masses that is simple to use- even if it still has a lot of warts.

I remember when Clive Sinclair was trying to explain the workings of his computer to Sugar he was interrupted with the remark "Clive, I don't care if it has elastic bands inside, as long as it works".

Split