Apprentice Final: You have to make stuff to make it, but you also need cheek which is why stubbly Tom got the nod.

Hands up everyone who tried to guess the big idea, the crucial business plan would be from the finalists. I thought Jim could have made a decent proposal with a new electronic invention called a Patternav, a resource for the tongue tied, where stuck for words or clutching for a cliché big Jim’s voice would come over your smart phone and say “Fair Play, you want a best man’s speech”. Susan I thought would come forward with a cultural awareness package for businesses operating in China. She was born there and would use this new package to answer key questions such as “Do the Chinese have cars?”, “Do they all still wear bamboo hats?” and “Are Pandas cute?”. Now Helen I thought would put “MyPy” into the fray as a mobile pie and mash franchise, complete with an app telling you how far you were from a Christopher Columbus cart. Tom, now well my favourite for him the Stubblesculpt, a new kind of shaver for men with heavy stubble like Tom.

In the event they all came up with fairly lame ideas except maybe Tom. He came up with an idea and a killer application, which is why he won. Jim went for a commendable and probably do-able e- learning package for school employability. Take it from me Jim’s variants of that idea exist but fair play, and who’s to say your appeal and charisma wouldn’t get it going as a commercial venture? He made it fit with Sugar’s existing business which was shrewd. Lord Sugar knocked it back smelling the sell of a social enterprise, shame. Unfortunately flattery is only allowed in certain circumstances and Jim was fairly quickly marched out of the process.

Susan flattered to deceive. She tried to extrapolate her skin care range from market stall to global business. She confessed to paying people on the fly and either to not testing her concoctions or not building in the testing costs.  Most inexplicable was Helen’s idea for a business which would get Britain back on it’s feet, a new type of trainer with a built in shock to get lazy folk running? Helen’s plan to pay down the deficit in one month by being “really focused”? That MyPy idea where people would be standing munching a William Drake outside like a smokers huddle?

No Helen’s idea was, as Margaret sighed disappointingly a concierge business. Sorry when people have to cut costs and when business people are making cuts, the idea of a business which is designed to remind you of your wife’s Birthday or book a table at a restaurant just seems well, daft. Even more so when it’s been done to death and it’s now catered for by every app under the sun. It’s a niche for the mass market she said illogically. Helen did not play to her strengths and was half-baked in the end.  Tom probably played too much to his to begin with. He proposed a visionary business to cure Britain of back pain with a chair and a diagnostic aimed at saving us some of the fortune we incur in back disorders. Lord Sugars disdain for such nampy pamby *** was all too evident. I know HSE people will get a bit precious but he does have a point. “I don’t know why people are off sick... it’s not something I will ever solve”. But my colleague Ben Wilmot and the many OH specialists I am acquainted with will be virtually high-fiving Tom. He put the issue of back pain and not a chair which might help avoid it, at the centre of his business idea. That ought to provoke discussion at least.

The entrepreneurs who pressure tested their ideas gave them all a hard time. Jim got the Margaret masque of haughty  disdain. She destroyed his Jedi forcefield as he clichéd his way out of a cliché filled cu de sac. Susan was asked to say where her revenues would come from and said “I pretty much know how to do this”. Right Claude’s basilisk stare was trained on her as he dissected her optimistic profit forecasts. When I say optimistic I mean made up projections about make-up. Helen was blow-torched into simpering quietude by Mike Souter’s reasonable question “what network have you built up to make your idea work. How will you get me a table at the Ivy?”

Tom was rocked back in his chair for not mentioning the chair in his back-pain master plan. Jim got detention from Mike for failing to recruit any head teachers to his employability and entrepreneurship plan. But fair play he just kept talking. However in the end as I predicted early on Tom had something about him and that something is that he brought an inventors brain to the party, and as I said last week, I think fairly on you need to make things to make money. But Lord Sugar had to see something else and boy we see that!

Tom’s description of how he got his curved nail file into Wal-Mart. Into Wal-Mart for Pete’s sake! This man doesn’t really know how to boast. The others did but with little behind it. Considering that Susan made flogging face creams at Greenwich market look as though she had a global contract from Revlon.  Lord sugar wants to go into the cosmetics business but not with forecasts that have no foundation. So, Tom’s revelation that he blagged his way into an audience with a  Wal-Mart buyer. I am a sure their hard faced disdain for pain and trained insensitivity to the unsolicited pitch would probably teach the tortured James Bond a thing or two. But it was a stroke of geek genius from Tom. It showed Lord Sugar that he had chutzpah, cojones, and backbone and  coupled with his inventing prowess meant he was hired. Mind you his nails have been clipped as the back-chair idea is on the back burner but look out of a whole suite of nail accessories. I am sure the Stubblesculpt will come endorsed by John Hamm and John Major for different demographics how can it fail? Well done Tom and I look forward to you nailing the market in cuticle management with Lord Sugar.

Loved
Toms fantastic story of Daniel in the buyers Den.

Scary
Claude’s confrontational approach which just felt short of physical violence.

Disturbing
Mathews elevator pitch to Susan. Would he go “all the way to the Penthouse” with one of the blokes?

Disappointed by
Helen’s clueless pitch to sell reminders to the constantly e-monitored.
Jim’s lack of learning about employability. Most of the contestants “brightest and best” my eye.