Raj Dhonota

Episode 10. Buying merchandise at wholesale prices. Selling it. Reinvesting in further stock. As lord Sugar put it, smell what you can sell. The team with highest combined value of sales and surplus stock win. Melody Hossaini was project manager for Logic, Natasha Scribbins project manager for Venture. Venture win. Melody Hossaini, Helen Milligan and Tom Pellereau end up in the boardroom. Melody Hossaini is fired.

To start with, it did make me laugh when Lord Sugar confronted Susan about her feeling that he had supplied the candidates with, in his words, “a load of tut”. I remember thinking the same once!

In the boardroom we saw Lord Sugar criticise Helen for never having been self employed, telling her that “you don’t just spring out of bed one Monday morning and say ooh I fancy starting a business….you have to have an idea and more to the point you have to have experience.” For sure you need an idea, and I’m glad Lord Sugar cleared that one up for us! However, I thought it was wrong of Lord Sugar to assume that just because someone has been employed their whole career, they either do not have the ability or know-how to start a business. I also disagree that having experience is a must have. Yes experience would be advantageous, but there are plenty of businesses like my company Life’s Dream, that help and support people without experience to start their own business. In fact, because Life’s Dream gives people the opportunity to start their own business part time or around existing commitments and without the need for any kind of investment, most of our enquiries come from people who have been employed their whole career. And if anything, this proves to be an advantage because their desire and willingness to build their knowledge makes them extremely receptive to the training we provide to bridge any experience gap. Franchises are another example where people are able to start their own business with the help and support of the Franchisor to bridge any lack of experience or knowledge. So in short, yes experience is useful, but not having any is not really a hindrance if you have the right support structure available to you.

Finally, we get to the firing. Despite Lord Sugar repeatedly telling Tom that were he to appear in the boardroom again he would be fired, that there would be no more chances, Tom escapes and Melody is fired. Hmmm? Ditto everything I have said before about the lack of consistency in the boardroom…