Make Money: The Apprentice - Its All Sweet at the Zoo

The fifth victim from this weeks show is Sophie Kain, the scientist who grossly miscalculated the quantity of milk required in the first task.

The candidates’ task this week was to design, make and sell sweets to children visiting the London Zoo. The aim as always was to win the task by making the most money; the juggled teams, led by Adam and Ghazal.

It didn’t take long before the two teams decided on what sweet to make and sell, aided by going out to finding out what their customers wanted, and listening to the advice of the sweet manufacturers on profit margins and so on.

Ghazal’s team won the task by just ten pounds and were lucky considering they did not manufacture enough sweets to sell - Ghazal and her team where not prepared to work the extra hours required to produce the quantity required. Had Sophie motivated herself into selling instead of focusing on her moral values then she and her team would have been out of the board room.

Where did Adam’s team go wrong?

- using the wrong labels on their sweets
- not selling enough at the set full price
- failing to maximise profit potential
- chose the wrong location initially

The main purpose of business is to generate profit; however, you don’t have to be ruthless in your pursuit. Getting the balance of making money and the best way to do it right is always a difficult process, but one you must go through. It is also one that will determine what kind of business you choose to go into.

All you need to make money is change the way you think and know what you are doing.

You can get a copy of the Make Money by Thinking CD here.

Make Money: The Apprentice - Start a Business in a Day

The casualty of this week’s task is Gerri Blackwood, fired for picking the wrong location yet again.

Sir Alan Sugar handed the two teams £200 each and set them the task of starting any business of their choice in a day. The aim was to make as much money as possible, the team with the most money winning the task. The task appealed to the entrepreneurial spirits of the apprentices’ and was similar to how Sir Alan started 40 years ago.

The Boys team settled for a gardening business while the Girls went for face painting for kids. Business fizzles out for both teams by late afternoon, focusing the apprentices’ to come up with other ideas of making money in the evening. The Girls decided on a kiss-a-gram while the Boys resorted to a sing-a-gram.

Some of the things both teams did wrong:

• setting a low price (£25) for their gardening services

• ignoring the location and time of year for their chosen businesses

• failing to research the current needs of affluent residents of Richmond

• poor selling skills

• losing focus

Sir Alan shows us through the task that it doesn’t take a lot to start a business and make money. As he stated, “With a bit of money you can drum up a business”. If you have been reading my blogs and bought a copy of the Make Money by Thinking CD, then this shouldn’t be news to you. All you need to make money is change the way you think, know what you are doing and take action.

Get a copy of the Make Money by Thinking CD here.

Making Money: The Apprentice - A Dogs World

Another interesting episode, two people got the famous phrase “You’re fired!” from Sir Alan Sugar. Ifti got the sack for not contributing to the task as his mind was on his family, while Rory was shown the door for being an effective project manager.

The two teams were set the task of designing and pitching a dog accessory to three retailers. Team Stealth settled on a flat pack doggy wardrobe, while Team Eclipse went for a utility strap aimed at the dog-walker (Rambo’s outfit according to Sir Alan).

Although the Boys team, Eclipse had orders from two of the three retailers, it was not enough to beat the Girls who came in at the last hurdle with an order for 2000 units making a profit of over £5000.

Where did Team Eclipse go wrong?

· Picked the wrong product
· Ignored the focus group on product ideas
· Poor pitch

What can you draw from the task?

· Money is the end result of valuable ideas
· Design products for a niche market
· Product must justify retail price
· Research your product and potential customers

Getting the sack was a difficult blow for Rory, an entrepreneur who had gone bankrupt twice before. Let’s hope he is learning from his mistakes and recognising the patterns of failure.

Anyway, the moral of the story from Sir Alan Sugar, when pitching a product, put your effort into the person / company who has the potential to buy a big quantity.

Making Money: What is Money?

The last blog addressed what you require to make money - “cause and effect”, thinking and doing things in a certain way and not ignoring the consequences of your actions. Today’s blog is about understanding what money is.

The answer to the above question seems obvious; the average man/woman on the street would say money is a pound coin, or a five-pound banknote. To many, money is seen as a “thing” - something you can hold or collect something tangible. You probably think the same too, just as I did a while back.

One major problem with this line of thought is that the five pound note in your wallet is nothing but paper with ink on it. It represents money, but it is not money. While money is defined as anything that is used for making payments and accounting for debts and credits, it is actually an idea introduced to facilitate trade as a means of exchange.

Money is the effect (remember cause and effect) of an idea. A reward for the effort put into creating an idea valuable to society and for bringing it to life.

What does this mean?

It means money has nothing to do with the coin or paper stuff rather it has to do with what your thought processes, feelings and consciousness.

If money is an idea - a product of the mind, then the creation and accumulation of money is influenced by the way you think. This also means all you have to do to earn and make money is to using your ideas create a product or service that increases the quality of our lives.

Look around you and you find true wealth belongs (rightly) to people who do the creating and or the producing and to people who arrange or organise the creation, the production and the exchange of goods and services in the market place.

Making Money: Cause and Effect

Cause and effect, the single most important principle key to being, doing and having all you want in life, including making money.

To be honest, this is one principle I have ignored too many times in my own life and I would guess you at some point, have done the same: ignored the effects of your actions.

If you care to think about how you arrived where you are now, you will realise your past actions - the choices you made determined your present predicament, give or take the odd surprises. You will come to the same conclusion if you applied the same thought to your current financial situation: your past actions created your current financial health, good or bad.

What does this mean to you? Making money depends on doing certain things in a certain way. Those who do such things - and do them in a certain way - become wealthy, whether they achieve that end on purpose or by accident; comparatively, those who falter in this dual respect, no matter how hard they work or how able they are, invariably remain poor.

All you need is to learn how to approach the building of wealth, and you will not be denied the chance to become wealthy. Think of your dream of owning and driving a car, you have to take driving lessons, and read road safety books, the same process is required if you dream of making and having money.

By the way, making money has nothing to do with age, formal education, gender or geography. You look around you and you will see rich and poor living side by side, in the same environment. Some young, some old, some with a degree, some without.

In fact, wealthy people have no greater talents or abilities than you. They are wealthy not because they possess certain things that you lack, but as stated a moment ago because they happen to do certain things in a certain way, and because they do not ignore the consequences of their actions.

No more excuses, you now know what is required to make money - you need to think, act and do things in a certain way. First off, you need to understand money, and this you will find out in my next blog, “Making Money: What is Money?”