For All Its Flaws, Why We Still Love The Apprentice

Most of the staff at Wedding Planner School Towers love watching and discussing The Apprentice.  It is superb entertainment, carefully constructed to provide the right balance of conflict and resolution that hooks in the viewer.  But despite its subject matter we would never look upon it as the best form of business education.  It is hard to filter out 99% of the very bad lessons (see my article on ’10 terrible lessons from the Apprentice’ from last year) to find the ‘moral’ of each episode, so each week throughout this series I’m going to comment on what I think are the tiny nuggets of value and put them into context in a way that you, an aspiring professional wedding & event planner, might be able to apply to your own career. WARNING: contains spoilers!

Episode 1  – Simple Sums

The show: The boys failed their task because they chose to sell a fixed quantity of a low-value product (potatoes) rather than any quantity of a high-value and very saleable product (printed t-shirts).

Your Career: When you look at selling your services, make sure you focus on selling the services which are popular and that pay you the most money for your time.  If your charging structure means that big wedding planning projects tend to work out at a tiny hourly rate compared to smaller projects e.g. wedding day coordination, then you need to go back to your sums and  work out which is going to make you the most money per hour.  Otherwise you’ll be working longer hours but earning less for it.  If you need help with your sums, just ask, it’s what we’re here for.

 

Episode 2 – Inflexibility

The Show: This week we were spoiled with two episodes.  We saw candidate Robert turn down the Project Manager role because he said the task didn’t match the exact business he wanted to start.

Your Career:  In the early days you take whatever you can get.  It will build up your skills.  It will give you a chance to get a good look at previously unexplored options available and you will learn as you go.  Okay, if Robert had been close to retirement he may not have wanted to diversify into new areas, but he was young and he missed the point completely – Treat the first year of your new career as an apprenticeship.  You can’t start by cherry-picking the perfect project where every single element of it matches with your current skill-set or business plan.  Sometimes you have to be bold – say yes to whatever is available and then get help to work out how to do it!    If you commit to doing a good job, you’ll find a way to learn quickly and you never know if it might open up a whole new world of opportunities.

 

This comment is made by Amber Hunter, expert tutor in Wedding Planning & Business from The Wedding Planner School