OK so now we have to come to the final episode of The Apprentice, as Lord Sugar's hunt for his business partner is almost at an end, and the last episode saw the four finalists, Ricky, Tom, Jade and Nick present their business plans to four of Lord Sugar's toughest business associates who would interview them.
So to start off with a bit of detail of the four finalists business plans, Jade's was for a telemarketing business, Tom's was for a fine wine investment program, Nick's was for an online website for colleting ingredients from sites for a recipes to make food and in turn it will be linked to sites where you can get the ingredients. And Ricky's business plan was for an ethical recruting agency, and he has had experience in recruitment, which he could utilise.
In the interviews however, the four finalists came under fire for different reasons from Lord Sugar's associates. Jade for starters had shoddy finanical projections for her figures, and after six months her £250,000 investment would be spent, although she hoped her business will have generated income by then. Tom also was criticised for his business plan in that it appeared that since his father created the business and Tom aided in it, that his father had more to do with creating his business plan, and also Tom's limited experience in the business due to his young age was also a concern. Nick's plan was also flawed as the interviewers felt that it was overly complicated, as they felt most people couldn't be bothered to go on his website to try and collate recipes for meals. Ricky however while he was criticised heavily by Lord Sugar's heavyweight interrogator, Claude Litner, for his personal statement on his CV, which had some ridiculous statements such as that he was Thor, whereas Lord Sugar was the Godfather, and that he could teach "an old dog new tricks" and that he would be "the best business partner on the planet". But Ricky's business plan stacked up very well against all the others and it was well received by the interviewers who thought it was well written and structured.
In the boardroom after Lord Sugar heard out his interviewing experts, he got down to the nitty gritty of deciding who should stay and go. And Lord Sugar decided that Jade was the first to go as he felt her business plan was a bit of an HR nightmare and her figures were a bit askew. Next up Lord Sugar fired Nick as he said his business plan was just too complicated and would cause the most problems to implement. So it was down to the last two, with Tom and Ricky, and in the end Lord Sugar had to decide between Ricky's playing it safe idea with the recruiting business, and Tom's real gamble to create a fine wine investment business, which Tom had some pretty ambitious figures after four years he was hoping to raise 25 million pounds. Soooo in the end Lord Sugar concluded that Ricky was to be his business partner, mainly due to the fact that he'd like to play safe rather than take a punt on Tom's ideas.
The final episode is always the most entertaining since they changed the format of the show to finding a businss partner, we have the interview stage then, and its great when we hear all the details of the candidates plans being weeded out. Although there weren't many dramatic or amusing moments revealed, with the exception of Ricky's personal statement about being Thor and that he was going to teach an old dog new tricks (meaning Lord Sugar!), but its always interesting and fun to see how the candidates deal with being under close scrutiny.
As for Lord Sugar's decision for his business partner, I have to agree with his decision of choosing Ricky, as he was the best out of the four of them, and throughout the series he showed that he could adapt all the tasks well. He also sold well, pitched well, and presented well, however it has to be said he was a bit of a big headed twat at times, but basically he is an OK guy, and his business plan was considered the best of them all. But one thing about his business plan was that it wasn't really described in the program that well and probably was as vague as his initial description of it he gave to Lord Sugar, we know it was about recruiting technical people, and Claude said it was very well written and interesting, but that was about it.
Anywayyy that's another series of the Apprentice over with and it was again very entertaining, but it did lack a few big characters to provide amusing TV, but I guess they wanted to move away from that since its a business partner Lord Sugar wants, and not a cheery, charismatic employee.
Sooooooooooo that's it, best of luck to you, Ricky.
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