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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Right from the get go the episode continued off from last week where it was announced that two more people would be fired with some type of task that would take place immediately. It turns out that the task was an interview process where Donald Trump had two business reporter guests being Jim Kramer from mad money and Erin Burnett from CNBC.

Overall, it looked like the interviewers preferred Trace Adkins and Carol Alt. They didn’t seem to like Piers Morgan’s aggressive personality and Lennox Lewis didn’t seem as confident through the process. One thing that I thought was kind of funny was how Jim Kramer always seemed like he has too much energy or something as he would talk super fast paced while over emphasizing his points. Guessing that is just the way he is though.

This was one of the goofiest boardroom deliberations I have seen. In the beginning it was pretty apparent that Lennox Lewis had one of the weaker performances and so he was the first one to be fired. It then came down to Carol Alt, Piers Morgan and Trace Adkins. The ultimate deciding factor on the final two was that Donald Trump wanted to establish this “Good VS Evil” type of battle between Trace Adkins VS Piers Morgan as he wanted to see them go at it and believed that they disliked each other enough that it would create a great rivalry. That was ultimately the reason Carol Alt was fired. This was definitely more entertainment oriented than business. Funny nonetheless.

The final task was that a large charity event will be held and the tasks would be divided into different aspects that the teams would have to negotiate with each other in doing. Four past contestants were invited back to the show to help in the final tasks where the two project manager would get to choose their teammates. Trace Adkins chose Lennox Lewis and Marilu Henner while Piers Morgan chose Stephen Baldwin and Carol Alt. Ultimately, Trace Adkins would be responsible for the events décor while working with the entertainment aspects of the event where the special guest artist was the Backstreet Boys. Piers Morgan was responsible for catering services while producing a live auctioning event.

There was this one hilarious moment where like most celebrities they have a list of demands in terms of items and accommodations whenever they attend an event.

Trace Adkins thought that some of them were redundant and so he decided to talk to the Backstreet Boys about it. There was such a generation gap between himself and them I thought as during their conversation one of the backstreet boys member talked about wheatgrass and Trace Adkins had a deer in a headlight expression. Here is a brief clip of it:

In the end, it looked like Trace Adkins biggest obstacle is being able to cater to the Backstreet boys to their satisfaction while Piers Morgan may not be able to draw as many celebrities to the event compared to Trace.

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The episode starts off with Piers Morgan celebrating on how Omarosa was fired and that his team won by a very wide margin. It seemed a bit too much though to the point of being a little arrogant I thought anyways.

The task this time was that the two teams had to create and sell a new sandwich for the company Quiznos which would sell for $2. The team who sold the most amount of sandwiches within a 2 hour timeframe would win. The project manager for Hydra was Lennox Lewis and for Empresario it was Trace Adkins.

Empresario decided to create a sandwich called the “Prime Rib Cowboy Club” and Hydra decided to create one called the “Champ Sandwich”. While Hydra’s sandwich wasn’t exactly creative, I thought anyways, their strategy was to leverage off of the popularity of Lennox Lewis to draw a crowd. I guess you could say Hydrra’s sandwich was a lot simpler.

There wasn’t too much to the task when it came down to it as it was mostly good old fashion hustling and working hard to serve as many customers as possible. In the end, Hydra sold 313 sandwiches and Empresario sold 253 and it was apparent that Lennox Lewis’ celebrity power in New York definitely played a role.

With only two people left on Empresario, it was either going to be Trace Adkins or Stephen Baldwin that would be fired. Considering that would bring the candidates down to four people as well, a factor to determine who would be fired was based on who everyone felt would be able to raise the most money for charity in the upcoming tasks. Because of that, Stephen Baldwin was the clear target as in previous tasks he failed to raise any money for his team and ultimately he was fired.

There was a twist at the end as the final four people were called into the boardroom after the firing and it was announced that as the final four they would be doing another task right that instant where two people will be fired. The episode simply ended off on that high note.

I’m feeling kind of bad for Trace Adkins after this episode as it seems to be like in one of those situations where you always have the good ideas along with the effort except you aren’t able to reap the rewards of your labor.

Another thing this episode made me think about is being humble in your victories. I can fully relate to how great of a feeling it can be when you defeat an adversary of some sort. Especially in this case how before Omarosa used so many dirty tactics against Piers Morgan and you would naturally want to rub it in as much as possible. I usually find that this is one of those situations where less is more as just by winning the other side will go to their corner and not giving them anything else to respond to will leave that incident in everyone’s mind as well. Besides, you have better things to worry about.

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The task this time around was that the two teams had to sell artwork at the Moti Hassan Gallery in New York and were required to choose an artist’s work to sell. The team who made the most amount of money to win. Omarosa decided to step up and became the project manager for Empresario and as a result Piers Morgan was enthusiastic in being the project manager for Hydra.

The strategy was the same for the most part which was again to contact wealthy people to try and raise as much money as possible. There was an interesting moment where one of Piers Morgan’s contact was the famous chef Gordon Ramsey. Just like in the show Hell’s Kitchen, he seems to swear a lot. It was done in a joking way though I think.

At first it seemed like Empresario had the edge as at the actual event they were getting all the foot traffic initially since their display was closer to the entrance. However, it was apparent that Hydra was making more sales and had more contacts showing up to make purchases.

There is such a thing as losing and in this task it seems to take the meaning of being obliterated to a completely new level. In the end, Empresario sold 3/16 paintings for $7000 and Hydra sold 14/20 paintings for $164,000. It was mentioned that in total $51,300 was raised for charity when you factor in the minimum sale price for the paintings.

There wasn’t even any question as to who should be fired as Omarosa simply got clobbered on this task. The only debate was whether or not Trump should fire two people since the team did so poorly. Ultimately, Omarosa was the only one fired and Piers was definitely enthusiastic about it. This was sure an episode to remember and it was about time Omarosa got fired I thought.

It’s kind of amazing though as even in everyday life you see people who keep getting away with things and making you wonder how much longer they can run before they are caught, so to speak. As evident, they all eventually get what’s coming to them as they can only run for so long.

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The task this time around was for the two teams to create four page photo essay/layout ad for the company Dial Soap in a magazine called Redbook in order to advertise its new nourishing yogurt body wash. The winner would be chosen by executives and associates from both the Dial Soap and Redbook organization.

There was an interesting moment where before Trump finished his usual speech on what’s at stake Omarosa was telling her teammates that she wanted to be the project manager. As Trump continued to talk, he emphasized that there was a good chance that the project manager would be fired in this task. Maybe it was just the editing, but afterwards Omarosa quickly tried to then encourage someone else to take the lead. That was such a funny moment there I thought. In the end, Carol Alt was the project manager for Hydra and Tito Ortiz was the project manager for Empresario.

Hydra went for a more wholesome lifestyle approach with their presentation. They used Carol Alt as the model and through the presentation they highlighted the different aspects of a women’s life such as starting a family and being in a relationship with of course using the product as a way to keep her fresh and invigorated.

Empresario focused on the fact that the majority of the readers were women and were told that a person like Trace Adkins was perfect for the audience. At first they went for a riskier approach where there were topless males set with a country desert theme with Trace Adkins being the model as well. Eventually, they decided to play it safe instead and went with a theme where it seemed like they were trying to emphasize the contrast between a desert that is dry compared to people who use the product who are more illuminating/refreshing so to speak.

In the end, Team Hydra was chosen the winner as their presentation was able to tell a message and story to the viewer better it seemed to promote the product. As a result, Carol Alt received $20,000 for her charity once again. There wasn’t too much of a drama in the boardroom aside from bringing up an issue on why a person such as Omarosa wasn’t the project manager. Of course, the topic came up on how she kind of tried to push it to someone else afterwards.

In the end, Tito Ortiz was fired and Trump emphasized how he did mention at the start that the project manager most likely would be fired. There was a surprise at the end too as Trump mentioned to Tito that he admired his talent a lot and would personally donate $50,000 to his charity despite being fired.

This is one of the first episode in the season I thought where it seemed like one’s celebrity status did not really play a role too much. I guess the point to take out of this episode is the whole mentality of taking risks and sticking to a plan/vision as the possibility of failure shouldn’t be the prevailing factor to stop you from creating what you believe in.

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