Just watch the first episode of The Irish Apprentice on TV3, I’m not impressed. Really is that the best Ireland has to offer in terms of business talent? Or were the good ones just not bothered to enter? After all there’s a shed load of money to be made in a recession. The show itself was well put together, Bill kills the position of big bad boss – he’s perfect for it and i’m really impressed TV3 went broadcasting online.


So why did it suck so bad?

The Apprentice TV3

In a nut shell these apparent great minds earned a grand total profit of roughly 6.42Euro per hour profit (~450 profit divided by 7 doing a 10hour shift). So the best of the talent pool of “entrepreneurs” didn’t quite do much better than being on the dole and were unable to produce the minimum value to society that is the minimum wage.

From a business perspective there was no USP’s (unique selling points), No strategy and No leverage. Even worse they didn’t even sit down the night before and plan for the day in hand.

So what should they have done?

Had a meeting there was only two ways the brief could have gone – Sell only to the public or use leverage and sell business to business. Divide into teams and tasks that individuals would be responsible for and get a team of runners to hit the pavement while the others decided on the strategy.

So what would you have done?

1. Worked out the night before where the hotspots of traffic were during different specific periods of time and their price parity.

2. Team one of two people hit the street where the most traffic is at 6am before price was decided. Just get moving. Team two decide on strategy given the brief and set pricing. They would then be updated about where events were taking place and at what times.

3. Team three aim for leverage. If i had 10 hours to sell ice cream i’d be making deals with restaurants to commit to buying a year or two’s supply of Ice Cream, I’d create new deserts that use a twister (etc) as an ingredient. I’d be making deals with vendors who will be at concerts who already sell chips to expand out to sell ice cream also. Whatever happens, i wouldn’t be trying to sell them one at a time.

4. Last of all i wouldn’t be putting up with someone on a megaphone chasing away customers and getting negative brand equity. Selling and product we all the project was about, so running out of product was a total fail on both parts.

As Bill said the boys team just failed worse than the girls. What do you think?