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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There were a lot of interesting tidbit lessons you could get out of this episode I thought. The task this time around was to sell Broadway show tickets with the team raising the most money would win. Donald Trump’s special guest this time around was Vince Mcmahon from the WWE. The project manager for Team Hydra was Vincent Pastore and for Team Empresario it was Marilu Henner.

There was an interesting comment from Nely Galan in regards to last week’s episode that got me thinking where she commented on how Gene Simmons must have respected her a lot to put himself on the chopping block. That made me think on how his actions could have been a result of thinking more long term in regards to wanting to develop business relationships with certain people outside of the show as well. That’s actually a very common scenario when I think about it in a work life.

For the most part, both teams had a similar strategy which was to contact wealthy people that they knew beforehand to purchase the Broadway play tickets at a generous amount of money. The two teams initially had to negotiate with each other on which plays they would be able to sell out of the pool of 8 shows. Hydra was more straight forward and wanting to get it over with it seems whereas Empresario to me seems like they were trying too hard.

At the actual ticket selling day it seems like Team Hydra was more willing to go all out such as Piers Morgan dressing up like King Arthur to get attention from the crowd on the streets. While Empresario had gimmicks as well, it didn’t seem to be a very pro-active approach to generate any kind of buzz. In the end, Empresario made $31,747 and Hydra ended up with $33,300 which handed Empresario their third straight loss.

In the boardroom it came down to Carol Alt, Jennie Finch and Marilu Henner. Initially though, there was a clear sign of a lack of team spirit as everyone didn’t seem to be focused on a common goal. The best example was Omarosa who tried to label Carol as a person who flies under the radar and she was quick to fight back. The women did make a comment on how Omarosa was like a cancer to the team yet Marilu mentions that she did not bring her in because she felt that she works good with her. I just thought that was a very strange way of thinking.

The weakest person clearly was Jennie Finch as she admitted herself that she was not used to this type of business environment and sure enough she was the one that got fired. This episode made me dislike Omarosa even more. I personally can’t stand people who are that disloyal.

In my opinion, focusing on dealing with the trouble makers who are constantly in it for themselves will help more in the long run despite if they seem like a good worker. I remember one example in a business where there was a person who seemed like the best worker from a numbers point of view and put on a good show to outsiders. In reality, he kept trying to demean the rest of his team members whenever possible and even resorted to stealing to better himself and overall the business did poorly. Focus on fixing foundations as oppose to instances I guess you can say.

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What an interesting episode this was. The task for this round was to create a mobile printing experience for the company Kodak on the sidewalks of New York. The teams were provided with an Airstream bus, Kodak cameras as well as printers to do so. The winning team would be decided by Kodak executives based on originality, brand messaging, and profit.

At the start Gene Simmons was asked by Donald Trump on whether or not he would be willing to lead team Empresario since they have yet to win a challenge. He accepted the challenge and as a result became the project manager for them. For team Hydra, Tito Ortiz was the project manager this time around. Donald Trump also had Jim Cramer, from Mad Money, as a special guest to help observe the team’s performances.

Similar to the last episode, Gene Simmons did not want to waste time talking to the executives. Instead, he sent Carol Alt and Nely Galan to do so while he focused on creating the visual presentation experience. The team created a very well designed presentation such as plastering the Airstream bus with the slogan and Kodak name. Nely Galan did not seem to listen to the executives very well though and as a result the information relayed back to Gene Simmons did not appear to be ideal.

Team Hydra did sit down with the Kodak executives to learn about the company’s product and direction. As a result, they seemed to be in tact with what would make the executives happy. They did experience a huge setup while Stephen Baldwin took photos of Tito Ortiz and Lennox Lewis on a table appearing as if they have been knocked out by the Kodak ink.

As they got off the table, all the weight caused it to flip up and it just happened that the laptop that had all of their art work had coffee spilt on it. As a result, they lost all the work on the computer and had to do a lot of last minute printing which made their presentation look very unpolished.

Team Empresario’s direction was to create a presentation revolving around a slogan of “It’s a Kodak world” where they attempted to highlight Kodak and its products. Team Hydra’s slogan was “The ultimate knockout experience” where they focused on Kodak’s new ink that enables people to print a lot more documents compared to regular ink in printers. Despite the poor presentation, in the end Team Hydra won as they did a better job conveying the message that the Kodak executives were looking for.

The boardroom got very interesting as it seems like a lot of people were more focused on getting rid of the people based on the future as oppose to the task at hand. Virtually every time Trump asked people on who they would fire the answer would be completely unexpected. For this boardroom session, Trump really wanted to fire Nely Galan and kept hinting at it.

When Trump asked Gene Simmons who he would bring into the boardroom, at first he asked if he could bring just one person and Trump agreed. Simmons mentions that he wanted to take Omarosa based one’s loyalty and Trump was just in shock. Now usually in past shows if the person made a strange request Trump would simply fire the project manager. Instead, he insisted that Gene Simmons choose another person as well and he then chose Jennie Finch.

To me, it looked like Trump really did not want to get rid of Gene Simmons or Omarosa for that matter. In the end, Trump mentioned that he didn’t really have a choice and had to fire Gene Simmons.

This was such an interesting episode especially with what happened between Trump and Simmons. I really liked Simmons’ talk about focusing on loyalty in people and how he was willing to stick to his final product to the very end. While it definitely wasn’t the best choice strategically if the objective was to stay in the show as focusing just on the task would have most likely resulted in Nely being fired, he was a very admirable business person there I thought. Makes me want to learn more about his background.

On semi related note, fellow Vancouver blogger and frequent reader Stewart Marshall actually works for Kodak and he informed me that before the show aired the staff at Kodak received a memo about the show encouraging people to watch it. He has made a post about it too with some behind the scene links and you can click here to read it.

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With a chapter title of “Revenge” it pretty much told me that this was going to be a fairly aggressive read. Trump essentially expresses that when people “screw you” getting even will make it less likely that others will try to do the same to you again.

He used examples such as helping a lady to become successful and when it came time where he needed help she looked the other way. Evidently, she lost almost everything one day and Trump took pleasure in refusing to give her things such as a good reference.

There was one story that was kind of intriguing where he mentions that he knew a famous basketball player who got robbed blindly by his agent. Afterwards, he discovered a lot of proof of some sort that would convict the person in question and Trump was adamant that he should go after him and even offered to do everything such as giving him a lawyer. However, the person didn’t want to go through with it and Trump labels people like that as a “schmuck”.

That just kind of surprises me on why a person wouldn’t take action in that case. For myself, I recognize that sometimes people do stupid things such as if there is a lot of money involved they get deceitful as they think they can get away with it. It’s like all those times where you see a good person stealing because they were tempted as the opportunity presented itself.

I usually give people the benefit of the doubt personally while throwing small signals about their actions which they know is wrong. If even after that it is clear that they made a conscious decision to not be truthful while attempting to steal from others that’s when I am personally fully willing to expose them as I think they should have to pay back and be held accountable for what they did. From what I learned, you can still be a nice person and succeed, but being naive is usually what ends up costing you at the end as a result of not taking action.

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