I just took this silly online test for fun which was suppose to find out how much money someone would have to pay you to say do something you would normally be against. I was looking at the scoreboard and it seems like people had price tags such as $250,000 or even one billion dollars. I guess in general the concept was the higher the amount the harder it is to get the person to do something.

So I did the test and I thought it was broken at first as the test said “No Price”. Then I read the result and then it all made sense as you can see here:

While this was all fun and games, I was thinking how this is an important scenario that people face everyday where we get enticed with money and materialistic gains to do things that would not exactly be considered admirable. Especially in a business environment, it can really create anarchy.

From my personal experience, everyone I have known who has ever allowed money to take over their judgment has ended up losing more in the long run whether it be from a financial point of view or a social one. Another way I think about it is that some people say success is always about the journey and so you could be cutting yourself short in the long run by doing irrational things solely because of money.

In the end, money is just an object that you control and not the other way around.

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I don’t know if you could classify this episode as a showmanship of business tactics as it seemed more like a domestic dispute of some sort. Donald trump decided that he wanted to mix the teams up in order to even out the playing field since Empresario was getting clobbered still. Although, I think it was pretty apparent that it was more likely done to create drama for ratings. The new teams were as follows:

Team Hydra:

Lennox Lewis
Piers Morgan
Carol Alt
Omarosa

Team Empresario:

Stephen Baldwin
Tito Ortiz
Trace Adkins
Marilu Henner

The task this time was to run a horse carriage operation and to raise as much money as possible with the team raising the most money would win. The project manager for Hydra was Piers Morgan and for Empresario it was Trace Adkins. For the most part, both teams had the same strategy which was to contact their big list of wealthy friends to donate a large sum of money for the service. The episode pretty much revolved around the chaos that arose as a result of Omarosa and Piers Morgan being on the same team as it was obvious that they despised each other.

Piers had an interesting direction where he decided that the people on his team will be judged by how much money each team member brought in themselves and that a commitment form would be created to re-affirm it. Of course, Omarosa isn’t exactly in the same status as the rest of them and as a result it seemed like she couldn’t get anyone. As a result, she became frustrated it seemed and even misspelled Piers’ name on the form that she created. Omarosa then became hysterical afterwards and Piers decided to fire her within 5 minutes into task.

This created pandemonium afterwards as Omarosa decided she wanted to create anarchy of some sort and to attack Piers in his personal life as a strategy to get him riled up. Pretty dirty tactics I must say. Here are some clips of this:

It makes me wonder too why someone would use tactics like that especially in this scenario where your actions will be publicly archived for scrutiny. I guess you truly can’t hide your character when it comes down to it. It seemed like Empresario was doing better as everyone got along and their carriages were constantly on the move. Before the winner was announced, Piers made a comment that despite the outcome either Omarosa goes or he does.

In the end, Empresario made $29,673 and Hydra raised $35,184 which was unexpected with all the circumstances. Trump also mentioned that Omarosa would be on the other team from now on as well. Donald Trump had a very difficult time deciding on who should be fired as the team did very well and got along with each other with no complaints. As a result, for the first time he decided to fire no one.

If this was based on overall performance and past issues I would of probably chosen Baldwin if you had to choose one person from the team. But wow, this episode sure showed how dirty and disgusting some people can be (It happens). I’ve always found that the best way to counter people who try to take things to a personal level to try and throw you off your game is with good old facts and encouraging self realization to the person in question.

For example, if I was in that situation I would have probably kept asking Omarosa if she thinks her charity would be proud to take money from her if she happens to raise any considering the type of tactics she was using. Kind of reminds of the time where she apparently got some kind of endorsement contract for a commercial and a large amount of people sent in letters saying they will never use the product again if they saw her name/face attached to it.

I’m sure attacking others in that way will give you satisfaction during the heat of the moment, but you have to keep in mind that it will then be out on your shoulder for people to see for a very long time if not forever afterwards.

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At first I never even heard of this and apparently this started towards the end of January. In a nutshell, there is an actor named Edison Chen who is in some sort of sex scandal as apparently he has taken hundreds of explicit pictures and videos of him with a lot of different women who happen to be major celebrities in Hong Kong. Somehow the photos and videos were stolen and have been redistributed on the Internet which has created a huge frenzy due to the names of the people who are attached to this ordeal. I’m not sure where this originated from, but someone even created a timeline of the incidents which is kind of crazy when you look at it:

I never even heard of these stars before personally since I am accustomed to western culture and so to me it just sounded like one of those celebrity gossip scandals that I don’t have too much interest in. However, the person is born here in Vancouver and I was asked if I knew anything about it. So I did decide to read more about it and I couldn’t believe how fast this was spreading in the east and quickly affecting the people involved such as business contracts being thrown out as a result of this incident.

For example, Edison himself apparently lost a credit card endorsement deal and from what I read he was suppose to play some type of role in the new Batman movie which is being revoked as a result of this it seems. He even has his own production company that most likely will be affected by this as well. Similarly, for a lot of the women that were involved their squeaky clean image and personality that they relied upon has been compromised which resulted in lost deals as well with some situations being extreme such as marriages that have been called off.

This got me thinking from a business perspective on how it is so important to be professional with your conduct inside and outside of your work. As demonstrated here, that old remark about what people do in their own time shouldn’t matter is sure not the case. Another way to think about it is that people often use the phrase ”People do business with people” which should make you think twice from doing something like that.

Another point that this situation made me think of is being able to admit your mistakes in life as oppose to trying to hide it. Using others as a scapegoat without taking full accountability for your actions will affect your professional image even more. That age old quote that I hear seems to be so fitting for this scenario where “It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to kill it.”

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This was a long and energetic 2 hour episode. It was announced in the beginning that Tito Ortiz would not be around for this challenge as he had a fight/match to attend to. The task this time around was to create an awareness campaign dubbed as “Soles United” for the Footwear company Crocs. The campaign’s mission was to encourage people to donate their used Croc shoes which will then be recycled and given to the needy. The team would also have to create an in store receptacle bin for people to place the shoes in and the winner will be determined by Croc’s founder and CEO.

The project manager for Hydra was Piers Morgan and for Empresario it was Carol Alt. The team’s meeting rooms were actually right next door to each other this time around which created an interesting twist. At first the Hydra suspected that the Empresario was eaves dropping on them and as a result Piers Morgan had a plan to send Vincent Pastore as a spy to get information out of them and was dubbed as the “rat”.

They did this by pretending that they had some kind of dispute while being very loud about it and Vincent Pastore sat outside the room pretending to be disgruntled. He then approached the ladies on how he wanted to work with them for this task as a result of the dispute and Empresario had no issues with taking him in.

Hydra’s direction was to once again utilize Lennox Lewis as the celebrity figure and created a receptacle bin using his image. They also came up with the slogan “Wear them, share them”. Empresario created a receptacle bin that was shaped like a Croc shoe while using Carol Alt as the celebrity image with a slogan of “Share the love.”

It got interesting afterwards as Vincent Pastore decided that he genuinely did want to help Empresario mainly in spite of Piers Morgan for assigning him such a task. He did end up providing Hydra with notes about what Expresario was planning to do though and became a double agent of sort. The episode then became like this one big soap opera about morals and ethics in business and life it seemed.

One topic was about whether or not it is okay to sabotage another person/company in order to get ahead. Ivanka mentioned how it was okay In her book depending on the situation. Maybe it’s just me, but when Stephen Baldwin started to talk about morals and ethics it just didn’t seem very genuine as he seemed like he was putting on an act.

Vincent Pastore decided to confess to Empresario about his original motive for joining the group and how he provided Hydra with internal information. In the meantime, Piers Morgan and Stephen Baldwin decided to have a little fun by giving Empresario members hints that they knew their whole plan and believed they were silly for trusting Vincent in the first place with a nudge on the fact that he plays a character in the show Sopranos.

Eventually, Empresario decides to get rid of Vincent and upon returning to Hydra and learning about his disloyalty to them as well it created a lot of tension. In the end, his decision to kind of play both sides of the fence didn’t work out as both teams did not want him and he ended up leaving while awaiting the boardroom date.

In the end, the Croc executives believed that Empresario’s idea was the best overall which gave the team it’s first victory. As the winning project manager, 10,000 pairs of recycled shoes were to be donated by Croc to needy people in Africa under Carol Alt’s name and she will also receive $20,000 for her charity.

Before any type of candidates were selected to be fired, Vincent Pastore mentioned that he wanted to simply resign from the show. There was then a discussion about quitting in life and how many times it is a mental game. Trump then got Vincent Pastore to express how he wanted to quit simply because of Piers Morgan which didn’t seem right. An interesting comment came up as Trump asked Baldwin for his opinion. Baldwin began to talk about morals and ethics again and mentioned how he believed that a big reason why Trump was successful was that he would never hurt someone to get ahead. Trump kind of smiled and just said no comment.

In the end, Trump accepted Vincent Pastore’s resignation and he was he one to go. This episode almost felt like some kind of high school match with people teasing each other along with “I’m telling on you” type of scenarios. The theme was definitely about one’s character overall. I guess as apparent in this episode, inconsistency in your actions and principles in life can sure create one big mess.

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A person asked me recently where once myself and a few other people are successful in holding a specific individual accountable for lying and cheating people financially on whether or not the person can ever buy back my trust by financially compensating back more than the original amount. For example, it would be like someone stealing candy from a store and then having to pay for it while offering to pay more as well in an attempt to have a good standing record with them again.

My personal answer was definitely no to that. The one time so far where I can specifically remember where someone offered to financially compensate me to earn my trust again was actually for a job when I was younger. It was a pretty typical example too where I’m sure a lot of people have experienced as a person tells you how great you are and all that when it comes to work yet you find out that they are undercutting you in every way possible with some shady tactics.

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever people try to buy back trust with money especially after the fact that the damage has already been done that it usually feels like they are doing it to save their own face as oppose to genuinely changing.

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