I don't particularly like him but he is clearly the strongest personality. Although ruthless in the tasks, he has clearly the strongest business acumen.

Don't hate people. he calls a spade a spade and this show is full of them

The strongest candidate will be the one with the business plan that Alan Sugar likes.
Everything else will be pretty much incidental and the edit will be for our entertainment only.

I think that the series with Tom suggests that this is the case.

100% this! No one can say Tom was anywhere near as strong a candidate as Helen.

And that is the problem with the 'new' format.

I reckon before the first task Lord Sugar probably had no more than 4 out of 20 business plans he fancied. so- no matter how good at tasks the other 16 are, they're never going to win.

I reckon Daniel must have a cracking business plan to still be in the process.

Maybe he's reinvented the wheel or something!

I agree. Furthermore, as LS likes tangible things, rather than "artyfarty" websites or business to business stuff, he is unlikely to favour the plans of people like Roisin or Solomon - or Mark. I think he feels most comfortable where there is an end product - which is why he was so tempted to invest in Susan Ma. Tom, with a proven track record in making things was always going to be a strong candidate.

So who amongst this year's runners has something like that up their sleeves?

If somebody has kept track so far of which candidates have mentioned what their business plans are it would be handy for someone to post a new thread so that we can see.

There is a format for the show and there is what we see or are allowed to see and judging from what we have seen the OP is right, Mark is the strongest candidate left standing.

I was wondering about the business plans too and considered that it might actually be Mark's that Sugar is after. He had an easy opportunity to get rid of him last week when he failed as PM after basically putting himself in the firing line so strongly but he didn't.

Also, of course there was the one and only time Sugar has raised a smile and laughed with a candidate and not just at them. Basically he seems to like Mark so who knows.

...... being the best of the worst is worrying.

Mark is not a strong candidate at all. He's shown little business acumen. What he's done is play the game well, but not well enough for Sugar not to notice.

Look at the last two weeks. In the board game task he pushed Puddin into being the PM. It was then his idea to do a dating game. Then, as soon as the team became locked in to doing a dating game, he started saying what a terrible idea it was and blaming Puddin for going with it. He wasn't trying to win, he was trying (successfully, as it happens) to get Puddin fired.

Then this week, he knows that the key thing to get right is the branding of the product, so he puts Daniel on that then has basically no further input. He just says "I trust you to make all the decisions, and I'll back you 100%". This way if Daniel does a good job and they win, he can claim credit as PM, but if they lose because of the branding (as they did), he can turn round and say that Daniel made the decisions and it's his fault. Couple that with sidelining Lauren and then saying she didn't do anything and, again, he wasn't as worried about winning the task as he was in covering his arse.

He's not shown that he's a good businessman, he's shown that he's more interested in winning the competition than he is in doing well in actual tasks, or doing good business. I don't think Sugar is blind to this, and I don't think he'll put up with it all the way to the final.

Who is the strongest candidate? I think Katie. She did well PMing the candles task - she listened to what Sugar said was the important thing in the task, and even though she won by a small margin Sugar still complimented her on her performance. And in other tasks she's always seen putting herself forwards to fill various roles, and always does well in them. She's not stood out from the pack yet by making lots of noise, but the winners often don't by this stage.

Roisin is the only candidate to have a better win/loss record than Katie (with 5 wins to Katie's 4), but Katie won as PM where Roisin lost, and lost with a combination of not paying attention to Sugar, managing poorly, and making at least one monumentally stupid decision. Mark, on the other hand, has only 2 wins and 1 loss as PM.

Or his business plan is doing photoshoots in Essex night clubs near where Lord Sugar lives to promote them - and then charging a fee for doing so?

I think he's a strong candidate too, the man has proven he can sell. I don't hate him as much as everyone else here seems to. Daniel on the other hand is a complete pillock.

Imagine you were PMing a task and you had to choose someone to head up your sub team which was a selling task. Mark would be the obvious choice by far and, if his business idea involves selling of any kind, I'm sure LS would have every confidence in him.

LOL! They probably aired a different episode that week outside of the UK

But believe whatever makes you happy

Yeah, he's painted it yellow and added some pineapple leaves coming out of the top.

No, I'm confident that my assessment is correct:

Not paying attention to Sugar: Right from the start, Sugar said that the task was all about the margins. Roisin didn't consider the margins the most important part of the task. When they lost, Sugar told her off for not paying attention to the margins.

Managing poorly: A large portion of the team briefing was her telling people to discount the candles. Before they'd even sold one, she was telling people to knock money off. James went off on one of his own, for sure, but she created the culture in which that was seen as the way to sell them, and in which selling out was more important than turning a good profit. This was seen by her own subteam underselling right from the off, which leads me to...

Making at least one monumentally stupid decision: After securing a sale of almost all her reed diffusers at the correct price (one of only two sales at the actual sale price anybody on the whole team negotiated) to a fancy hotel, she then goes out and finds a tatty shop to which she sells all the reed diffusers at almost half price, making less money than she would have done had she completed the sale to the hotel.

Yup, I stand by my characterisation of her performance as PM. If you want to dispute what I said, you'll need to put forward a cogent argument, rather than just scoffing.

I agree a lot with most you have said. The fact that Mark lied about what he does to get the PM gig shows where his intentions lie.

I'm not sure I agree about Katie being the best candidate there are occasions where she's been as mich a passenger as Lauren but she never gets picked to go to the boardroom. Even on this task I don't think she contributed that much. It seemed to be Daniel coming up with the ideas such as the design on the packaging and picking the three flavours of the drink. All Katie did was draw on a board when Daniel was briefing the design guys

I think Mark is good at remaining calm and therefore when he is talking comes across as someone who can be trusted, this means he is good at selling, products and himself as a businessman. I don't think he is the best candidate though, he spent the last task sidelining Lauren so he had someone to get rid of in the boardroom.

This is where the edit comes in. We don't really know what everybody's full contribution to a task is. People just quietly getting on with it don't make for good TV, and people who aren't brought back into the boardroom often don't make much of an impact in the edit.

The point is that you fairly often see her putting herself forward, her actual task performance is one of the best out of the whole bunch, she's shown herself to be a good PM, she's been shown to be competent, and hasn't demonstrated incompetence. There's nothing that makes her stand out, as far as the edit goes, but that's often the case for the winner around the middle of the series. The people who stand out are usually the idiots like James or the people with big or quirky personalities like Filipe, but these aren't usually the people who win. The people who just get on with it are usually more likely to win, and they don't usually make much of an impact until the numbers have become smaller. Look at Leah or Stella or Yasmina. Even Ricky and Tom weren't really big characters at the start of their series, although they did become more prominent earlier.

Completely agree, she has shown me nothing. Really not sure how much faith we can put in team or pm wins as a lot of the time the winning team are just slightly less shocking than the losers. I just don't remember watching the show and thinking at any point well done Katie.

Concerning Mark ---- obviously brighter than your average candidate which is making him stand out ----- but ultimately don't think Sugar will trust him or like him as he likes to work with lapdogs who he can milk.

Roisin I like - in all ways

As Lord Sugar said to James, he should have followed the brief from his PM. She did make a mistake with the giftshop deal and would probably have been fired over it if that was the only mistake, but there were several mistakes made (and the loss was down to the price of one candle, so the loss could be attributed to any of them).





LOL She only told them to discount the candles at a later part of the selling day, which is what any manager would say. Did laugh at the large portion, it was one or two sentences at most??

As for creating a culture, come on, every market stall holder (Nurun for instance) or market visitor would know how discounting works.

But the main thing is that your point is not about the managing of the team at all (it is about the selling strategy) Look at the "rank the candidates" thread and see the comments posted about Roisin (ah well, a minority view is still a view)



This was already discussed in point 1. So, that makes it basically two points and both about the selling strategy. None about how she actually managed the team (and obviously none about how they designed the product, which would have been major lols).

It was probably one of the best losing PM jobs in recent Apprentice history (despite the mistake with the giftshop/hotel). In fact, if you were to make a poll with all the winning and losing PM's of this series, she might even crack the top 3 (behind Solomon and Katie probably).

None of this addresses the point that you quoted. That point, again, was that the task was explicitly said to be about the margins, and Roisin completely disregarded this while Katie did not.


She started off telling people to discount the candles. Then, as soon as the team had physical candles in their hands, both subteams started selling them for discounts. After a briefing in which the whole team was told that they should discount the candles, everybody sold the candles at a discount. People were following Roisin's lead on that.


The selling strategy is part of how she managed the team.


If you think there's something relevant there, then please quote it in this thread. As it is, I can't see what relevance other people's opinions could have, but if you can quote something relevant I'll listen.


And you agreed that I was right to say that she made at least one monumentally stupid decision. Good. I'm glad we're on the same page.


How they designed the product was included in the point about the margins. If you were to say that Roisin's products were of superior quality you'd be right. But that wasn't the aim of the task. The aim of the task was to make the most profitable product, which is not what Roisin did. That she made the candles out of the most expensive materials, rather than trying to flog tat at a high price is just evidence that she was ignoring Sugar's explicit instructions to focus on the margins.


Again, you seem to be going for an argument ad populum. You are aware that this is a logical fallacy, right? Your namesake would be shaking his head.

That's not how it happened. Yes, he did raise the idea of a dating game. However the market research showed it was not a good idea. He reported this back to Pamela. By that time she was convinced the dating game idea was good and decided that despite the research they would stick with it. At that point they could still have changed.

Mark took the research on board and realised his idea was poor. I'd say that was a sign Mark does have good business sense.

He's playing the game as well of course. I agree with you that he hung Lauren out to dry last week. But despite this he remains a strong candidate with good business skills.

In my opinion, and as some posters have already said, Mark is not a strong candidate.

He does have good business sense in most aspects and it is undeniable that his ability to sell is very impressive, however, when it comes to working within a team he has shown he really isn't a team player. He is focused on covering his own ass so that when something goes wrong he has someone to use as a scapegoat. While I agree that Lauren did not contribute an awful lot to the most recent task, Mark was ultimately responsible for her performance as PM and if he cannot motivate his team and utilise their skills in accordance to their abilities, then responsibility primarily lies with him as the member of the team in charge. One week he complained to Lauren about Daniel doing nothing, the next week he was slating Lauren to other members of the group. If he is so upfront and honest, why were these opinions of his always left to the boardroom or earlier in the task when the person wasn't there to defend themselves?

Personally, Roisin is one of the strongest candidates for me. I agree that the margins error did her no favours, especially given her career in accountanting, however, I do believe it was James that was most responsible as a result of the steep discounts he offered. As another poster mentioned, common business sense from the other candidates should dictate that reductions should only be made when sales are struggling and then gradually increase towards the end of the task, not from the very beginning.

Just because someone focusses on scapegoating someone else, doesn't mean that that would be their approach in an actual work situation. If you take someone like Yasmina, for example, she had a controversial win on the second task of her series by cutting costs wherever possible and making money from food which was only just edible - some people would say that that showed she didn't have good business skills, but she ran a restaurant before she went on the show. I highly doubt that she ran her restaurant with the same approach because that was something that would rely on customer loyalty and satisfaction, but the task wasn't, and she had to adapt her strategy for the task at hand.

My point is that to do well on an Apprentice task, which is very contrived, you have to do things that you wouldn't do in an ordinary business situation. One of those things is setting up a scapegoat to blame if you lose, which is what Mark did. And credit to him, because it worked. They lost the task, but the fact that he wasn't fired was a direct result of his personal strategy, which was to set Lauren up. I doubt he would have done that in the real world because it's not a reputation you want, but for the purposes of The Apprentice, it did very well for him.

I agree - with the caveat that Lord Sugar likes salesmen, who have massive flaws, and tends to keep them in till late. The show also tends to invent cases for people who are being kept in . Mark hasn't shown that much business sense. He lost as PM - tellingly to Bianca. He has sold well some weeks. His record is beginning to look like Ruth's. Neil has supported him on twitter and the show suggests they share some negative characteristics. He's now, however, been labelled as someone who avoids risk and traps others into danger. He's avoided the tasks nearest to his own field - which means he can't prove his proposal case as well as others can and Lord Sugar has asked why . He's been called a gameplayer in the boardroom , and his war with Daniel is pretty unmissable. The argument is there to be picked up that he is risking success- by making decisions with an eye to the boardroom argument to come. He may be looking as damaged as Ruth did - when Lord Sugar got into into his head that she had tricked Syed into making mistakes in the cruise ship entertainer task. The theme of having someone he can trust to work with comes up again and again with Lord Sugar, and he's raised a flag against Mark. Once its mentioned in the boardroom it tends not to go away. lord Sugar has also never hired the brash, the ruthless, the gameplayer, or the salesman - unless you count Lee.

I think Katie is ahead too . She's shown basic business skills, including selling, she might not have had . She did jump into a task that had no relationship to her own specialit - and won it. She's shown that she can do what she says she can - she is shown doing it on the youtube video. She's shown a head for strategy and figures. She's as good as Mark at spotting what went wrong, and as Roisin at assessing the candidates.

That doesn't mean that she will win though. Leah won with a tight proposal in the right cost/return/ risk bracket - after Luisa did much better on basic skills and on tasks. Roisin could do that with the right proposal. Katie can probably expand her fitness empire - but he found some spurious arguments against Fancesca expanding her dance empire. Somethings may not interest him. Solomon may turn out to have a proposal like Tom's -which will win even if there's lots of better task records - or he may have one like Nick or Neil.

Not sure having a dumb idea, offering it , and then hearing other people tell you its a dumb idea, and deciding it was a dumb idea, shows that much thats praiseworthy. It shows you can understand a good argument, but will come up with dumb ideas on your own.

Now Pamela did stick with the dumb idea. But what choice did she have when no one had a better one, and the alternative was an empty box?

I don't see the business skill. On the last task, he left his other best pitcher on his team in the UK. He didn't take a grip on his advert, and left it to the least likely suspect. He spent the task marginalising Lauren- so he could claim she did nothing. He didn't take over the presentation entirely himself- even though he seems to be their best salesman. Indeed, he spent most of the task ensuring that someone else was responsible for everything.