Partner Article

Apprentice Final in a Wider Business Context

Sunday night’s Apprentice final saw Mark Wright walk away with £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar. A combination of his will to win and his plan to start a digital marketing agency helped him beat 19 other would-be entrepreneurs in the BBC1 competition. In the series climax, he faced Bianca Miller, who was proposing to launch a hosiery company that produced tights to match a wide variety of skin tones.

Apprentice-winning business plans are starting to follow a theme. As with Leah Totton and Ricky Martin before him, Mark Wright’s idea wasn’t particularly new or innovative. Rather, his business model is based around a gap in a market that he knows well, matched with a desire and passion to exploit it. While he was impressed with her creativity, Lord Sugar considered Bianca’s tights concept too risky and in the semi-final, Solomon Akhtar, whose moniker was that ‘it’s all in the idea’ was laughed out of the board room after his plan didn’t include financials.

While there’s often a desire to see an Apprentice winner unveil a ground breaking new idea, this trend in successful candidates actually matches the way the majority of new businesses emerge across the UK. Most successful start-ups are built on hard work, determination and effort. Any entrepreneur that is passionate about something and is willing to put blood, sweat and tears into an idea can start, run and grow a successful business.

The glitz and glamour of the Apprentice makes great watching, but after the bright lights have faded, it will be the execution of Mark’s business plan that will help to determine his success. If you want to follow in his footsteps, combining hard graft with a well thought-out strategy will mean your business has every chance to take off, even if it isn’t based on a revolutionary new idea.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by David Walsh .