The Apprentice 2024

ArmaniJeanss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982902#Comment_121982902

The mixing of the teams and the 4 v 3 seemed a blatant tactic to maximize Phil's chance of getting a win. "Right, I want you to create a football skills video for use in schools. I'll mix up the teams - Lionel and Erling, move over to Phils team"

Still Ill

Yeah, thought the same. Do we know what his business plan is yet? Getting Inventor Tom vibes with the way this is going down.

AndrewJRenko

Why does Rachel have horns?

Galwayguy35

Was sure Flo would make it to the final, she was the only one who put a bit of work into a business plan and was a strong candidate in all the tasks.

Still Ill

Fair play to Paul for not panicking and taking that horrible deal for his existing business. Really is a bad look that billionaire Sugar was trying to take half of his successful business that he's built from the ground up for a measly £250k.

Feel it's a similar situation with Phil too. A successful business with £750k in cash albeit possibly going through a rough spell. He'd be better off going on Dragon's Den.

Guildenstern

Sugar playing safe investing in existing businesses. Really does look they are keeping some people in the process because of their business ideas rather than their performance on the tasks.

gmisk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122013306#Comment_122013306

Genuinely the only reason that pie guy made the final...useless

Still Ill

Can't see why anyone with a successful business would want to make a fool of themselves for ten weeks in order to give away half their business. That's a lot of equity for not much cash in the grand scheme of things.

Can understand why it's appealing to someone like Tre who had an idea, but no actual business alright, but it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Discodog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122013310#Comment_122013310

Absolutely. The Dentist is allowed to totally change his mind yet Flo isn't allowed to revise her figures. This series has been very dodgy on lots of levels.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122013232#Comment_122013232

Playing devil's advocate here but Paul shït the bed entirely and sunk himself. Ten weeks with a business plan that utterly collapsed in one day. I'd say fair play to Lord Sugar for not taking a last minute cash grab. We've seen before that he's no interest in candidates who want to push a second unrelated business whilst retaining a "primary" business.

Felt a little bad for Flo but a shelf company recruitment business was never going to work. She would likely have been hired back in the original Apprentice format.

Was quite surprised how unprepared and frankly, delusional Tre was with his plan. Seemed like a lovely guy but again, there was nothing there to invest in.

I'd say Lord Sugar knows/knew who was winning before the final.

yerwanthere123

Surprise result, I thought everything we've seen over the last two tasks pointed to Phil being the winner. Rachel is a very credible person but her business just seems like a bog standard gym, no matter how much she tries dressing it up.

Mr. CooL ICE

She was a good candidate but I didn't think much of her business plan. After the presentations, I thought Phil had it.

Phil's presentation was better, product was better and sounded like there was more room for growth. However, his grasping of numbers and forecasts let him down and his "it's not all about profit" comment was the nail in the coffin.

Rachel's ability to speak in figures was more in alignment with what Sugar wanted which is why I reckon he went with her

GAAcailin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122036962#Comment_122036962

think Sugar would have had more work to do to get the Pie business expanded etc. Rachel was a more business savvy and smart person. Think he went for the individual more so than the business idea

ihateboards

I suspect Phils business (five outlets, 700k in cash) was worth far more than the 500k valuation, Lord Sugar's 250k investment would place on it, so if common sense prevailed he'd have to reject such an offer. Similar to Paul's situation with his dental practices.

The 250k is not a prize but instead the amount Sugar is willing to pay for a seemingly fixed 50% of whatever business is on offer.

The series is like a prolonged Dragon's Den negotiation, where you have to wait 10+ hours of TV to find out what the business is.

Discodog

Have to agree. I thought the show was about investing in people. I can't see how Paul could agree to giving away 50% especially as he told Rachel that he wouldn't be giving lots of advice.

I can't remember hearing about the 50% in previous series.

AlmightyCushion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122038535#Comment_122038535

It has always been 50% since they changed the format to be an investment in a business idea instead of a job.

druss

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122036962#Comment_122036962

Contrary view. I thought, after the interviews in previous week, it was obvious that Rachel was now going to win. If Paul had agreed to the ridiculous pressure on him to hand over half of his dental practice to Sugar he would have joined Rachel in the final week and would almost certainly have "won".

Phil was very much the backup plan, but I thought he had no realistic chance of winning - again unless he completely junked his plans.

I thought the whole thing was even more publically unscrupulous than before. Before, it was obvious that the process was rigged to faciltate candidates with better business plans. They would be protected in weeks where they conspicously underpreformed in the weekly task. Others would be randomly fired for spurious reasons.

But this approach of looking beyond their business plan to see if they have any other saleable assets - and then getting the different interviewer's board to line up and consecutively pressure the candidate to withdraw their proposal and agree to Sugar taking over half of something else entirely to their huge financial disadvantage was pretty odious.

Fair play to Paul for resisting. It must have been fairly tempting, when stuck in this weird tv silo, to go for the win.

Discodog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122038554#Comment_122038554

I don't remember that

Galwayguy35

Claude thinks Sugar should have gone with Phil.

Exclamation Marc

Reports in the last few days that Rachel's business has never turned a profit.

brian_t

Thursday 30th

For their first task, Lord Sugar’s candidates are sent to Austria to sell and run alpine tours.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00275ym

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123066268#Comment_123066268

I saw a teaser trailer from the Apprentice the BBC player just before christmas and thought it was starting soon.

I know it is rubbish these days but I always enjoy it.

I noticed Dragons Den is back as well, first episode was last night.

Trigger Happy

I will probably watch the first couple of episodes. I just wish that they would bring in different type tasks apart from sell/badly design/pitch. Something to get them using their brains a bit more.

I remember seeing an episode of the US apprentice where each team was given a motel room and they had a fixed budget to renovate it. Each room was then booked to various members of the public over a week. The winner was the one with the best customer satisfaction rating combined with the hotel management feedback. Like it was interesting and different to the tasks that the UK version have.

Still Ill

I wish they'd move away from just trying to make the contestants look as stupid as possible in every task (apart from the final, where they suddenly become competent). It really has gone completely terrible compared to what it used to be.

tiegan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123066311#Comment_123066311

I don't think they need any help to make themselves look stupid most of the time!!

ArmaniJeanss

Two Irish. Aoibheann from Donegal. Jordan from Dublin.

The Apprentice 2025 cast | Full line-up | Radio Times

Business plans (so you don't have to read).

Bubble tea, curry pizzas, hairdressing tools, hair transplants, linking entrepeneurs with investors (that's quite meta for the Apprentice).
Aircon units, platform to sell other people designs and take a percentage?, healthy coffee, public speaking trainer, white teeth, student tutoring, AI music?.
AI telemarketing?, fashionable construction work-wear, padel courts (bit like tennis), recruitment, healthy meals, hairdressing salons.

There seems to be no gyms or pies this year sadly.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123109572#Comment_123109572

Seems like they're generally focused on selling to themselves, their age group, their social group, rather than the public at large.

eeepaulo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123066311#Comment_123066311

This.

How can anyone learn how to give a tour with the breadth of questions you have to answer in a day. The people selling the tour don't know what they are selling because the other half of the team is negotiating it at the same time. They have no knowledge of the people in the area they are selling to. All so the 'big' man can come in at the end (after everyone has sat down) and sit in his 'bigger than everyone elses' chair and tell them all how awesome he is.

They even make them hand in the business plan before they start now. At least a few years ago they let them rewrite them to show what they have learned.

The standard of people have improved in the last few years, is not just ultra aggressive sales people, most of them now aren't as utterly unlikeable, which makes the tasks designed to make them fail and look stupid less enjoyable. I watched the year Tim won, he was a worker on the underground, there was a posh English fella whos business went bankrupt, a slightly sweaty salesperson etc. It just felt genuine.

And shuggy used to hire people to train, so it was 'the apprentice'. Now its 'the debtor' or maybe 'the business partner'

I'll still watch it later😁.

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123109572#Comment_123109572

I am looking forward to seeing myself on the TV later on.

Still Ill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123116848#Comment_123116848

All of this is bang on. The plinky plonky background music they play to highlight how calamitous the contestants are is so grating too once you notice it.

The tasks are all very samey and fake these days too and easily manipulated. Pitching to, or buying product from someone clearly involved with the show. Maybe I was more naive back in the day, but it felt like they used to actually deal with real businesses and tasks were won by selling to the general public.

As for the business partner bit, Sugar tried to swindle a guy out of his entire established family pie shop business (last year?) when he was only proposing to share a new location. It was an attempt at daylight robbery and left a really bad taste.