Is this like some kind of new trend where there is a big market for networking/recognition type of events that people are actively trying to capitalize on? This e-mail was especially confusing as the wording sounded as if I somehow joined this.

From - Mon Mar 31 13:43:37 2008
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Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:18:59 -0400
From: Continental Who’s Who
Subject: alan your who’s who submission
Reply-to: admin@cwwinnercirclenews.com
Message-id: <20080331161859.1688407937@cwwinnercirclenews.com>

March 31st, 2008

alan yu, Welcome to our Canadian Inner Circle.

We are equipped and eager to direct clientele to you in vancouver. Our referral based program enables you to be reached by hundreds and thousands of Professionals along with your Peers with the purpose of doing business with you. We look forward to your imminent inclusion.

Our organization recognizes men and women who have achieved success in their respective fields. Continental Who’s Who is used as an outstanding professional resource throughout the World, providing a forum for Consulting, exposure and credibility.

Visit us at the address below and aquaint us with your History.

http://www.cwwinnercirclenews.com

We look forward to your reply.

Very truly yours,

Brian Kelley

p.s. We are proud to invite you to our consortium.

33 West Hawthorne Avenue Valley Stream, NY 11580. Continental Who’s Who is not affiliated with Marquis Who’s Who or any publisher that uses the words who’s who in their titiles. Please withdraw my E-mail

Just like with that other offer I’m guessing there is some kind of sales pitch in all of this. Another thing that caught my attention is how all of these companies or organizations that are sending these unsolicited e-mails appear to be residing from New York. Is there like some kind of current government grant or incentive to encourage these types of start ups down there?

Similarly, they initially want you to fill out a form it seems with a bunch of personal information and the website itself seems to be pretty new considering the literature implies that the organization has been operating for awhile.

It’s kind of humorous how they mentioned that as a benefit of joining you can use them as a 3rd party endorsement for things like your resume or that you can announce your acceptance on press releases. Guess I won’t be receiving that prestigious plaque that they mentioned about as I’ll pass.

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Today I went to help a family member as his computer was running slow and I agreed to take a look at it as he figured that he needed to spend money to upgrade it but wasn’t sure how much it would cost. Upon looking at it, I concluded that he didn’t need to spend any money as it just looked like he simply had too many applications that automatically loaded up in the beginning. I simply disabled them while doing some tweaks and sure enough the computer ran a lot faster.

This isn’t something I do professionally in a business sense, but afterwards he wanted to pay me for my time as he mentioned he would have had to pay someone to do it anyways. He is actually a business oriented person as well and so to him it just felt really wrong to not compensate someone for their time.

On the other hand, I thought that the issue was so ridiculously easy since I was knowledgeable about it and on top of that I didn’t want to charge a family member for something so simple. We ended up going back and fourth about the topic in a nice way and eventually he mentioned that he still wants to pay me back in some other way.

It just feels too weird for me to take money for these small things that feel more like a casual gander especially when it is not in a demanding business fashion. For example, if it is a situation where the person starts setting a time and place where something must be done with certain guidelines then of course you should charge the person as you can’t survive by doing things like that for free all the time.

Of course there are always those that try and abuse other’s generosities, but that is usually spotted fairly quickly.

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If you are semi into movies then I guess like most consumers you are aware on how there were these two high definition disc formats of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Not too long ago, it seems as if HD-DVD is now being phased out. As a result, it seems like everyday I see rock bottom sale prices to clear any inventory of HD-DVD movies and players.

I know one person who is just stocking up as a result and the funny thing was that he mentioned he does this normally where for products like these he waits until it looks like it is the end of the lifecycle for a product before purchasing to save money. His other point was that many times everything is new to him anyways at that point and so to him it is sill kind of new in a sense.

That’s kind of an interesting way to save money. I would think that you would be too way out of touch with present happenings if you did that to the extreme though. Then again, I guess entertainment products like these aren’t exactly a necessity product in life.

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So this was the final episode and it was shown with a live audience. As we all know, the final event was to run a charity event. Trace Adkins’ dilemma continued with the Backstreet Boys’ demands as there was this humorous moment where one of the band members mentioned that they forgot their black nail polish and so Lennox Lewis and himself had to go find some from a store. I just couldn’t stop laughing at that moment.

At the actual event the auction was interesting as some of the bids for the items were enormously high. Most notably, Piers Morgan had three items that generated $100,000 bids from one of his supporter. The items were a private tea with Sarah, the Duchess of York and a night with the Ozzies.

The last bid was a $10,000 shopping spree with Ivanka Trump. At first there was a person in the crowd that bid $20,000 for it, who I think was a Trace Adkins supporter, and then out of nowhere Piers Morgan mentions that someone from London wanted to get into the bid for the charity event. The person happened to be Simon Cowell, most notable as the judge from American Idol.

He immediately raised the stakes to $50,000 and the two had a bidding war. The person went up to $85,000 and decided to stop when Simon Cowell mentioned $100,000. Lennox Lewis was definitely shocked over that.

The boardroom was very lively and got kind of personal. Specifically, Trace Adkins felt that Piers Morgan was belittling his guests so to speak at the event in terms of the amount of money that the people he invited could afford to donate. It kind of raised that question too where if a person was a multi-billionaire and donated one million dollars does that mean he cares less than say a middle class worker who donates ten thousand dollars?

There were a lot of hilarious moments too such as when Trace Adkins continued with his bash fest in regards to his experience with the Backstreet Boys. He even said something along the lines of “Could I have pulled the veteran chops on them and started smacking them around? Yeah, I could have beat up the whole band by myself”

The results in the end were as follows though in terms of raising money:

Piers Morgan
Auction Event: $376,000
Ticket Sales: $12,000

Trace Adkins
Auction Event: $64,000
Ticket Sales: $38,000

A key reason why Piers Morgan sold less ticket sales was that one of his strategy was to give away a lot of free tickets to have some of the members of his charity show up as an additional push to get people to spend money for the items.

Then came the live deliberation as all the contestants were invited back to comment on the two finalists. Omarosa was there too and of course they showed clips of her and Piers despising each other to try to get them riled up I suppose. There was actually an interesting mini scuffle between Trump and Carol Alt as she mentioned that she should have been in the finals. Gene Simmons couldn’t make it to the event as he was in Tokyo. However, he appeared through a live broadcast.

They decided to re-invigorate the reason he was fired in regards to the episode regarding the Kodak printer and how he believed Kodak was all wrong for not choosing his team as the winner. A Kodak executive was live at the show and mentioned how they have doubled their sales since their last campaign to prove that they were right and regardless Gene Simmons stuck to his views. They had a constant “polite disagreement” with each other. I would say just being on the show was a key reason that sales went up no?

Overall, it looked like the majority of people were rooting for Trace Adkins to win with the Good VS Evil theme continuing. Before announcing the winner they showed a long clip for both Trace Adkins and Piers Morgan in regards to the charity they are raising money which was great as with that you know that they both gave their charities a lot of awareness and exposure regardless of who won. Donald Trump also mentioned that he would donate an extra $250,000 to the winner’s charity as well.

The winner of the show though was a clear no brainer in this case I thought. While Trace Adkins was definitely the more likeable person, Piers Morgan was pretty much in a different league all together in terms of the success rate when it came to winning and raising money. In the end, Piers Morgan was chosen as the winner of celebrity apprentice.

This final episode was super entertaining I thought and is definitely a memorable one. The main thing that stuck in my head in the end from a business perspective was this whole nice guy vs bad guy scenario they were portraying and how it is easy to get sucked into a stereotypical view of people which doesn’t happen to be the case. It can actually hurt you too as a result.

From my experience, the funny thing is that in business and life many times those people that seem to be nice and portray this harmless personality all the time are actually some the most malicious liars that I have seen while leaving a trail of unadmirable actions that most people would never even imagine they would do . Vice versa, many times the people who you would assume are the worst since they seem like ruthless decision makers that come across as very aggressive can be some of the most loyal and honest people you will ever meet.

Because of that, I tend to try and evaluate one’s character based on their consistency of certain actions as well as if they contradict themselves a lot. While this may not be a fair assessment since I don’t exactly know the person, as an example based on what was shown in this entire season I would say a person like Stephen Baldwin would give me that unsure feeling as his actions seemed very contradicting many times. So while I’m sure he seems super charismatic and likeable, that type of personality would cause me more worry rather than a say a person who is aggressive in a professional sense yet consistent. Don’t just judge a book by its cover I guess you can say.

Overall, this season was interesting. I think I read that they were planning another celebrity version which I guess means that there won’t be regular candidates for awhile. It does seem like after the first season though that the show is slowly slipping away from focusing on business issues per say and more into the entertainment realm. Till next season.

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Yesterday I was talking to a group of people who were working on a film and they started working from about 7am with an anticipation that it could last the whole evening as well. While they mentioned that they were dead tired and could barely stay awake, the thought of how much they would be paid due to all the overtime was a motivating factor for them to not complain and besides that they don’t mind.

I know most people who hear that would wonder how anyone could fathom the idea of working say 12 hour days for a long period without being apprehensive over it even if they are making more money. When you are truly doing something you enjoy you tend to not keep track of the time per say but rather achieving a goal.

This is one of those things too where when you do something you truly enjoy the money seems to come naturally in one way or another too. Whenever I have to put in long hours into some kind of task I personally don’t see it as having to work longer but rather working more now so that I don’t have to work as much afterwards. Different way of thinking I guess.

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