The Apprentice 2014

[david3103]

I think the worse idea won.  GG your £250k Sugs.

Ricky started a business in a similarly crowded marketplace and appears to be doing pretty well for LordSirAlan. He had nothing much more than experience of the market, enthusiasm, commitment and the substantial benefit of a mentor with a huge network of contacts. Mark has the same.

Bianca had a good idea but not much more.

[Chompy]

Mark very impressive and fancy Climm Bon Lean will crush pretty hard.

Sarah such an idiot.

Regards

Ch

[kinboshi]

Wow, just heard the "details" of Mark's business plan in the final episode. LOL.

Unbelievable. Reminds me of someone who has binked a poker comp and thinks they're going to give up their job and go pro to win millions.

The thing is he's actually never done any SEO. He doesn't understand how it works really, or how rapidly the market is changing. Also his account manager visiting the client once a month is a £500 a month charge to the client that's completely unnecessary. A garage isn't going to commit to three thousand pounds a month to a random company promising the world, why would they want to spunk five hundred quid on meeting with someone? When he can't deliver the promises after six months, what happens next. Who exactly is his target market?

SEO as a standalone market/product/offering is actually dead. It's part of the online marketing mix. You can't just "do SEO". It's part content marketing, part website optimisation, part UX expertise, part web development, part social media marketing, etc.

What URL are they going to use for the site? climbonline.co.uk and .com are already taken. You'd have thought he'd have done some preliminary research on that first. Apparently he's going for the hyphenated version, but as yet there's no site there.

It's going to take more than a quarter of a million to get the company delivering any serious returns.

[kinboshi]

Also, why weren't there any SEO experts or agencies in the audience for his presentation?

Regards,

k

[redsimon]

Just watched it too on catch up as fell asleep watching it.

Both ideas seemed to be poor, overpriced tights vs over hyped tripe.

Tried the climbonline and its a mountaineering site?

Time to ditch it methinks, formats tired

regards

rs

[nirvana]

Was pretty funny. I liked the way people kept talking about how he was going to be working in an area he was expert at as a strength/low risk thang. Like someone selling the Evening Standard saying their next step was to start a new paper.

Also, surprised to see Alan going for such a mee to biz in such a competitive area.

On the other hand, I think you're being too pessimistic, after all, they secured a £36,000 p.a order from a guy just by sending in 3 people and saying, can we have an order please

Regards

n

[kinboshi]

The company Mark was working at was:

http://www.reachlocal.co.uk/

So, he's simply offering a rehash of their business, with maybe more of a focus on SEO rather than search advertising?

[kinboshi]

Was pretty funny. I liked the way people kept talking about how he was going to be working in an area he was expert at as a strength/low risk thang. Like someone selling the Evening Standard saying their next step was to start a new paper.

Also, surprised to see Alan going for such a mee to biz in such a competitive area.

On the other hand, I think you're being too pessimistic, after all, they secured a £36,000 p.a order from a guy just by sending in 3 people and saying, can we have an order please

Regards

n

LOL, that's true. Get six more of them and they'll be turning over the £250k a year. Just the small matter of costs as well...

Regards,

k

[George2Loose]

Ricky Martin is in line to take over from Nick Hewer.

If Lord Sugar quit who'd next in line?

Regards

G2L

[kinboshi]

Peter Jones could do an apprentice-style programme I reckon. He'd love the publicity and has a wide-ranging portfolio.

I think the format would need to change though. Needs a refresh anyway.

Regards,

k

[Graham C]

Also, why weren't there any SEO experts or agencies in the audience for his presentation?

Regards,

k

There was, I'm sure one of the people who asked him a question was from 4P's or something like that, Mark said he wanted to be as big as them.  LAS said he had the head of Google UK sat next to him. 

I did think it was funny when he said he was going to employ people to do the work for him. So basically he's going to get a few sales in himself and then he can then just project manage the whole thing. 

From a small business point of view, I quite liked his idea.  It would be nice if someone that phoned me up about SEO actually wanted to understand my business needs rather than shout loads of abuse at me and tell me I'm "fucking mental" for not wanting more business and agreeing to spend loads of money with him.  A monthly meeting rather than a rehashed Google print out would be of great interest too. As you said though, the thought of a small garage spending £3k per month is laughable, it just won't happen and there's only so much work you'll end up getting done for you if you enter at the minimum spend each month of a few hundred of your British pounds.

I really thought Sir Sugar was going to go with the tights when Bianca came back in and said she'd go for the wider market and sell them cheaper.

Wrong decision for me this time, but then I'd not have given a strange man who made toe nail clippers the money either.

I have enjoyed it all though.  There's been lots of cringe moments but if you don't sit and analyse these things too early on, it's been good fun.  I'll miss Nick, I like his ramblings, he's a very funny man.  We've seen him a couple of times live at the recording of Have I Got News For You and he's brilliant fun, the show won't be the same without him.  Perhaps another lead figure in business would be good for a change.

Regards

G

[Kmac84]

Good shout on Peter Jones. 

I wouldn't mind seeing Theo doing it, he's a bit mad as a hatter and makes better TV than Peter. 

Agree that the show needs to be redone. 

Personal preference would be to shorten the process but go Big Brother esque and lets see all the nitty gritty and bitching and see how they actually perform. 

[kinboshi]

Also, why weren't there any SEO experts or agencies in the audience for his presentation?

Regards,

k

There was, I'm sure one of the people who asked him a question was from 4P's or something like that, Mark said he wanted to be as big as them.  LAS said he had the head of Google UK sat next to him. 

The guy from 4Ps want necessarily an SEO expert though, he was the one of the directors of the company wasn't he? He basically said that the business idea was six years out of date and was the same as plenty of others.

I wanted someone to ask an incisive question such as "how would you help a company who had received penalty from the Panda or Penguin updates?" or "I'm a garage who has £3k a month to spend on SEO, what would your initial analysis include and what would the likely steps be too ensure they get good quality, converting traffic to their site?", or even "how does he think Google will change over the next three years, and will they look to replace PageRank as the core of their algorithm?"

I did think it was funny when he said he was going to employ people to do the work for him. So basically he's going to get a few sales in himself and then he can then just project manage the whole thing. 

From a small business point of view, I quite liked his idea.  It would be nice if someone that phoned me up about SEO actually wanted to understand my business needs rather than shout loads of abuse at me and tell me I'm "fucking mental" for not wanting more business and agreeing to spend loads of money with him.  A monthly meeting rather than a rehashed Google print out would be of great interest too. As you said though, the thought of a small garage spending £3k per month is laughable, it just won't happen and there's only so much work you'll end up getting done for you if you enter at the minimum spend each month of a few hundred of your British pounds.

Sounds like you've had experience of bad SEO agencies that actually don't know what they're really doing. Again it's like poker, anyone can claim to be an expert and a "winning player".

As for the head of Google. Not sure why he was advising Suralan to go with Mark, but the other thing is that he's the ex-head of Google UK, which means he'd have zero to do with organic search, and would have been solely focused on paid search. Although the two are related, they're very different beasts.

I really thought Sir Sugar was going to go with the tights when Bianca came back in and said she'd go for the wider market and sell them cheaper.

Wrong decision for me this time, but then I'd not have given a strange man who made toe nail clippers the money either.

I have enjoyed it all though.  There's been lots of cringe moments but if you don't sit and analyse these things too early on, it's been good fun.  I'll miss Nick, I like his ramblings, he's a very funny man.  We've seen him a couple of times live at the recording of Have I Got News For You and he's brilliant fun, the show won't be the same without him.  Perhaps another lead figure in business would be good for a change.

Regards

G

In the past it was about getting someone good into suralan's organisation. But now it's all about the business plan. Yet the process doesn't follow that. Mark would probably be a good sales guy somewhere in the organisation, but add you can tell, I wouldn't invest in his business plan.

Regards,

k

[The Baron]

Wow, just heard the "details" of Mark's business plan in the final episode. LOL.

Unbelievable. Reminds me of someone who has binked a poker comp and thinks they're going to give up their job and go pro to win millions.

The thing is he's actually never done any SEO. He doesn't understand how it works really, or how rapidly the market is changing. Also his account manager visiting the client once a month is a £500 a month charge to the client that's completely unnecessary. A garage isn't going to commit to three thousand pounds a month to a random company promising the world, why would they want to spunk five hundred quid on meeting with someone? When he can't deliver the promises after six months, what happens next. Who exactly is his target market?

SEO as a standalone market/product/offering is actually dead. It's part of the online marketing mix. You can't just "do SEO". It's part content marketing, part website optimisation, part UX expertise, part web development, part social media marketing, etc.

What URL are they going to use for the site? climbonline.co.uk and .com are already taken. You'd have thought he'd have done some preliminary research on that first. Apparently he's going for the hyphenated version, but as yet there's no site there.

It's going to take more than a quarter of a million to get the company delivering any serious returns.

Nailed it as usual. Amazed he picked this although Mark was clearly the better candidate and Bianca's idea was also pretty far fetched on that budget.

[TightEnd]

i thought bianca was the more lucrative idea, potentially. new market, though wasn't sure they addressed barriers to entry from the current manufacturers at all

that said, suralan is in his 60s? £250,000 isn't going very far having to set up manufacturing from scratch with someone with no experience at it at a staged in your life when you want to let the other person do the work

therefore, he was stuck with Mark a bit