Wow, this episode is definitely one of the more memorable ones that I have seen out of all the episodes and seasons so far. More about that a little later. What happened this time around was that team Kinetic did not have to do a task at all since they won last week and this time around the Arrow team was split into two groups. The task this time around was that the two teams had to create a tour based on a made up theme of their choice and the team with the highest approval rating from the tourists would win. I thought there was an interesting foreshadow of what was about to happen when the teams were split up as the candidate Aaron stepped up and volunteered to be a project manager for one team and afterwards no one else jumped in to lead another. Because of that, Trump just asked if Michelle would want to lead and she just had that deer in a headlight reaction as it was apparent that she didn’t really want to do it but did it anyways since she was put on the spot.

Overall, Aaron’s team pretty much dominated in every way that you can think of. Their theme was called “Famous places, Beautiful faces” and they got this smart idea to feature the Laker girls in their tour. As you can tell, their tour revolved around visiting areas that are either famous or involves celebrities in some way. Michelle’s team had a theme of “A day in the life of the rich and famous” and they basically visited famous landmarks while talking about its history. It looked like a complete disaster for them as nothing seemed to be going right for them. Everything from microphones not working to their tour guide speeches simply sounding like it was poorly improvised. I the end, Aaron’s team received an approval rating of 82% and Michelle’s team received a rating of 58%. It wasn’t even close.

Now this was the moment that made this episode very interesting. Since Michelle’s team lost that meant that someone would be fired on her team. When Trump was about to send the people out to deliberate on who would be the one to get fired, Michelle then commented on how the interview process is nothing like what she expected and that she wanted to take herself out of the candidate pool. Everyone definitely reacted at that comment. Her main reason that she kept mentioning was factors such as how they had to sleep in tents outside when the weather is freezing cold and all. She then commented on how she would love to be considered for a role with Trump’s company through a more traditional route in the future. My personal take on this is that she knew she was probably going to be the one that was going to be fired and that this was just a way to save face so to speak. I think it made it pretty obvious to conclude that when she was asked if she had won would she be saying the same thing and she stuttered before answering.

This then got Trump to talk about how he feels about people who quit in general when the going gets tough. It actually sounded a lot like the audio where he talks about success which I posted on my blog and you can click here to find it. I personally do agree that some of the elements this time around such as the losing team having to sleep outside of tents to be a little on the Survivor side and it doesn’t seem like it adds much to the show overall. For this situation though, that just felt like a cop out excuse from a person who knew that she did a horrible job and rather than facing her potential consequence she decided to run. I guess that dives into the real debate of this all on whether or not there truly are times in cases like these where one should simply give up or if that simply makes you a quitter in life. Trump uses a harsher word as he calls people losers who quit. That’s a little too harsh I’d say.

In my opinion, it’s one thing to quit something if it is due to superficial reasons like say you broke your leg and so you have to take yourself out of a track team, but when someone quits just because it is difficult or not what they expected, I personally agree that one would probably regret it for the rest of their life as you don’t know how far you truly could have gone especially in this case where you knew it was going to be tough to begin with and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for you. I don’t mean to generalize in anyway either, but from my personal experience the people that I have met in my lifetime who always seem to run into the corner and give up whenever things are getting tough are also the people who seem to be the least successful in anything. People will probably use this against her now whenever she talks about anything related to business. As an example, a quote from her bio says.

“Michelle also founded Urban Circle, an LA-based non-profit organization designed to empower children through participation in physically challenging activities. Michelle, who currently resides in Santa Monica, CA, says she should be the next Apprentice because she has “the integrity, smarts and drive to make anything possible.”

Kind of makes it hard for her to back that up now based on what happened. I also recognize that sometimes it is more about how you come back from failure than the failure itself, but in this case I don’t think giving up and failing is the same thing. This was one of the more interesting episodes definitely so far.

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An interesting topic came up today where I was talking with a group of people and the subject was about whether or not it is better to do things yourself based on free advice and your limited knowledge in a certain area or if it is better to simply get an experienced professional to do it for you when it comes to performing a task for your business that you are not entirely sure of. For most it comes down to money as I’m sure everyone would rather try to save as much money as they can whenever possible. On the other hand, a lot of other people do have money as a concern as well and see it in a different way where you are minimizing the financial loss by getting a professional as doing it yourself might result in some fatal mistakes that will end up costing you even more in the long run.

For myself and most other serious business owners that I know, opting to get a professional to do something that can potentially have a big impact in your business is usually a no-brainer as there is a reason why certain people specialize in specific topics and fields. A general example would be say a person who thinks that they can write up their own contract agreement that will do the job based on what they know and read as oppose to getting a lawyer to do it as it would cost no money. The main type of things that I would personally opt to do myself based solely on what I hear from non professionals or know a little about are things that are meant to increase my skill or for fun. For example, I’m not a chef but that wouldn’t stop me from trying to cook something based on what my friend who works as a manger in a popular restaurant told me. Now if it was business related somehow that would be a different story as I would get a real chef to cook for everyone.

That leads into the other interesting point that came up too. What if the advice and instructions you received was from someone who was involved in the industry but was not necessarily an expert in the field? They should know what they are talking about and so it should be safe to just do what they told you to right? I personally find this to not be the case many times. An interesting example that I personally experience almost everyday since I am in the web industry is how someone wants to try and increase their search engine results. They mention how nothing is working as they did everything that was told to them by the people who made their site (Were mainly programming and graphics people). When I ask what they did they would say things such as just trading links with all their friends, create hundreds of pages with copied article materials and so fourth as that was the instructions that were given. I know, heads are rolling for those who know better.

To me, that is a good example on how if someone just works in the industry and gives you tips and advice about a subject it doesn’t necessarily mean you should hastily act on it. It’s great if you read about it so that you can understand what they are talking about, but if it is something that can drastically affect your business I would get a professional to do it. Some word of advice based on experience as well, if you do plan to get an expert to help you in whatever it may be try and see if you can validate some of their work. There are so many times where I have been to a place where they claimed that they specialized in certain things when really they just read a quick guide for dummies like book or article and are now calling themselves an expert. In the end it’s about doing what’s best for your business and so I’d say do whatever it takes to get it right the first time without trying to take cheap shortcuts as you are obviously in it for the long run.

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I just bumped into this interesting article on MSN money that you can read here that talks about eight people who struck it big by winning the lottery and due to various decisions they lost it all. Some of the stories are pretty disturbing and it seems like the main theme in these millionaires becoming regular people again was that they tried to please too many other people who requested financial assistant.

I think everyone has been there before where it seems like everyone just wants something from you because in their opinion it won’t affect you that much anyways. For myself in these types of situations, I have adopted the mentality that in many cases I am doing people more harm by say just blindly giving them money as they will just do it again unless they change their habits. Not only that, but if you don’t take care of yourself as well then you won’t be able to help anyone anymore. Like they say, live and learn and I guess these examples are a good eye opener for those who may be in similar type of situation.

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I discovered this one million dollar challenge in a rather indirect way. I was just browsing the news and there seemed to have been an event recently that debunked a famous physic named Sylvia Brown as she told a family years ago on the Montel Williams show that their missing son was dead and gave specific details on the location of their son’s body and the kidnapper. Just recently, the boy has been found alive and the kidnapper was nothing close to what she described. The parents then claimed that previously after the Montel Williams show appearance Sylvia Brown offered her services to them in helping to find their son’s body for about $700 per 20 to 30 minutes of service. If that is true, I don’t see how people can sleep at night when they try and take advantage of people when they are at their weakest emotionally. This got me curious to research more about this physic.

Apparently in the past a person named James Randi who is known for challenging people who claim that they have some kind of paranormal, supernatural or pseudoscientific skills had actually challenged Sylvia Brown to prove that she actually has psychic abilities. The challenge is pretty simple where a person that claims that they have these types of abilities can win one million dollars if they can prove it under controlled conditions where you are pretty much monitored in everyway and can only use materials that are provided to you. It is listed on the James Randi Educational Foundation site at http://www.randi.org/research/ where you can read more about it.

I’ve never used a psychic myself before but like anything else whenever people tell me that they did some kind of reading that tells me what my future is going to be I personally treat it as a form of entertainment. Like they say, predict your own future in life by making it happen. For everyone that claims to have some kind of supernatural ability, here’s your great chance to prove it and to make a lot of money while you’re at it.

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I’ve seen this many times before and have just never written about it. What do a lot of people usually do when they don’t have any money left? They first gather together a convincing story on how and why they desperately need money right now and they then share that story with others such as friends and strangers in hopes that someone will empathize with their hardship to then give them money.

Many people have actually adopted this mentality on the Internet with much success. Everything ranging from an ordinary person who accumulated a five figure credit card debt to even celebrities begging their fans for money, I guess on the web it isn’t really a humiliating thing to do for them but rather for many it is an art form in saying and showing the right things to get people to give them money. Obviously it is working for many too as new stories pop up everyday and how a cyberbeggar got what they wanted.

I guess the initial reaction from many who read stories like these afterwards vent out on how ridiculous it is as people who go into debt by doing things such as constantly going to parties or buying exquisite jewelry deserve to be in the hole that they dug themselves in. While in many ways I would agree with that, I have to admit too that the fact that they didn’t just sit there and complain about life but rather thought of a creative way to generate money to be admirable too.

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