Celebrity Apprentice: George Takei

This time the task is about Ivanka’s clothing line and making a nice window display at Lord and Taylor. The women had a hard time picking a project manager because 2 women wanted to be it. The men George T. because he was gay and they thought he and Clay Aiken would know all about women’s clothing. They didn’t. Arsenio picked the outfits. Clay was pissed at George again because he thought he had no clue as to what was going on. Debbie Gibson was pissed at her team because she wasn’t asked to model because she was older than the demographic Ivanka specifically identified as her customer.

It turns out no one on the women’s team was really good at what they were doing but the men had a team member show happened to be a super woodworker. He was able to finish the window design without the project manager seeing it. However, the team doing the window felt they were neglected because the project manager trusted them so much he did not check on them. Lou F. thought the midnight blue was too dark and that George T. would regret it later.

The men thought out of the box and having twins, one for each window. The women thought out of the box in asking Ivanka directly if they could also use her jewelery. Debbie Gibson seems very pleased to have come up with that one after they dissed her and declined her to be a model.

Let me say this about the commercial- it was a movie-like, long, 2 minute commercial from Cartier. I wasn’t high enough to really get it, but I did want to buy jewelery after it went off.

The women had a love fest at the trump table, the men only had Clay Aiken to dish dirt on the project manager.

George Takei leads the men to their first loss and is ultimately fired. He took full responsibility and did not act surprised. He was his same old classy self.

Lesson: Even though you trust your team to do the job right, they want you to look over their work and acknowledge what they are doing.

Celeb Apprentice 2012- Cheryl Tiegs

Cheryl Tiegs was the first to be booted off Celebrity Apprentice. Her comment was that it was an environment where you had to be hard and she did not want to be that way. She is a seasoned business woman, so being hard may not be her style but I am sure the world of modeling was not just easy come easy go! I think having to make sandwiches turned her off and she thought that weeks of manual labor isn’t too cool. Whatever it was, the big lesson for me was when Penn told everyone how to brand the sandwiches. I think it helped them focus on making a better sandwich.  Then he also talked about how their team leader was powerful and not overpowering. They never got to see how tough he could be because they all worked together and went for the goal. The leader also had a secret weapon of ONE person giving over $300,000.

When the Chopper was asked who he would boot off, he picked the one black guy and the one Asian ( and gay) guy. He has no idea what a bad move that was. He exposed his personal biases that have nothing to do with the people actually in his group. George Takei has  seen some hard times and knows how to scrap! Arsenio Hall has too, his jokes are just to throw you off. And now they know exactly how to throw the Chopper off his game when the time comes. Right now the task is beat the women’s team as many times as you can to knock them off, then start gunning for each other.

While the ladies held back their big donors (for their own time when they were team leaders), the men did not appear to do that. I say… did not appear to do that. If each of them has a big gun saved for their own projects they kept that information to themselves, which the women were clearly all holding that game plan. Cheryl was admitted it and also said she didn’t think this was her environment. That sealed her fate and she was fired.

Here is the key! Not every project is based on fund raising, so saving your big guns for YOUR Time at bat, could cause you to lose a LOT of tasks because you never needed them when you were project manager.

Big lesson? Branding is key and being a leader doesn’t have to be done by being heavy handed.

My money is on Penn for the win and on the women’s team I want Debbie Gibson to win. Yes this is a totally biased post.

Post your thoughts below!