You’re Fired! I don’t want to buy your business.

31/03/2009 by info.

For the candidates, The Apprentice is about impressing Alan Sugar to the detriment of the other team members. To the producers its all about entertainment, and drama. In reality however it is really about taking part in simple tasks that test basis business acumen.

This series, the cleaning task was about recognising that profit is more important than turnover. The task was won and lost in the first hour when one team spent considerably more than the other thinking that a budget was a goal.

This week’s task is the catering task, what does this test? Well surely it is all about buying the right amount of stock to meet the forecast demand, and I am sure that the task will be won or lost not on whose food is the tastiest but on who throws away the most food.

Who can forget Syed Ahmed incredibly ordering 100 chickens for 500 pizzas, losing his team the task?

I wonder, do The Apprentice candidates look at the previous series and recognise what a task is designed to test? I’m sure they don’t, they never learn from the mistakes made in the previous series.

Do business owners who want to sell their business learn from their and others sellers mistakes?

Do they carry out proper research before they decide to sign a contract with a business transfer agent?

Do they ensure that their financial information is current?

Do they clean their premises and remove redundant rubbish?

Sellers make the same mistakes time and time again, and then they wonder why they cannot sell their business. Even after being given feedback, they do nothing about it.

The buyer is in effect firing businesses from THEIR reality show, every single time that they view, and decide that that business isn’t worth the asking price.

Unfortunately just like in The Apprentice the seller often doesn’t learn from his own mistakes even though they have personally taken part in every previous series of the show.

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