Apprentice Winner - Karishma Vijay

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0:44According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. For those of you that follow me on LinkedIn, you will have seen that I have been a big fan of The Apprentice this year. I actually think it's great for social mobility. And I was really struck by the two finalists. And I am delighted that the winner, Karishma, is joining us on Jimmy's Jobs of the Future today to talk about how she's going to spend Lord Sugar's quarter of a million pounds.

1:23On to today's episode. Karishma, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Thanks Jimmy. Congratulations on your victory on The Apprentice. Thank you so much. What have the last four days been like? The last four days have been back to back, interviews, podcasts, everyone's trying to get me to like give them this exclusive tea on what actually happened. But you know, I'm here now and I'm ready to answer all your questions because I feel like this is going to be a different type of conversation. You know, I've heard about you sir, I've heard. I've been told this is a good one you've got to go on jimmy's pod so i'm here um yeah tim campbell's been giving us the big up right um so what what first question what are you going to do with the money right like where are you going to build it because i think it's been amazing to see the reaction actually to you on the apprentice like in the 20th year they've gone all out like a lot of people saying including like the independent you're the most impressive contestant that's ever been on it out almost 400 and it is true that you have built already quite a substantial substantial business like what's your what what are you going to do with the money you've probably got a bit of an idea already i just so find it so amusing that that's what's been said about me because i've never watched the show like i just think it's so ironic and all these papers are coming out saying like in 20 years she's the most competent business person that's entered the show and i'm just like wow i wish i watched it because i don't know firstly i don't know who i'm being compared to and secondly i just think wow like for me to have not seen it i'm pretty sure it was one of them ones where a lot of people thought it was an immediate disadvantage because i just don't know what to expect like even hong kong task one get told it's a discount buying task i had no idea what that meant and i'm just sat here thinking right discount buying and then i had to ask other candidates what does that mean and they were like are you stupid and i was like well no i'm the only one that got negotiation on my team anyway but point is you've got to adapt you know you just got to go with it and figure it out as you go along and do you think it was an advantage not having watched the show before that absolutely because i did my own thing i never thought about oh okay usually they do 30 in the last season you know or in this task they decided to do this logo and maybe we should do something similar everybody's opinion of what they should be doing was heavily skewed by previous seasons heavily influenced by what other people did right and what others did wrong.

3:45And whereas I, I took every risk, I run it as if every task was my own business plan and that's how I saw it, that's how I did it. And I think that's why it went well. There was like fresh ideas all over the place coming from me and people were like, how did you come up? It's like, cause I've not watched it, I've not been brainwashed by like previous seasons of candidates doing like silly shit. And so what, yeah, what are you gonna spend the money, like marketing hiring like what are you looking to hire for so thankfully we've done it's in papers and stuff it's crazy we've done 250k in sales in the last like 72 hours so now wow yes like it's insane in fact we did it last week we did it as soon as i got into the final within like the next few days we did that and then again with the final we did it again so basically what's happening here is the apprentice did exactly what it was supposed to do for me expedite the success like process for me put me into the public eye put kishkin my brand into the public eye now we've got 250 000 pounds extra to give us a really good fighting chance at being the next hit brand you know and 250 000 pounds in a grand scheme of things and lord sugar will tell you this is not a lot you know not to sound not to sound ungrateful i'm very grateful for the opportunity but i came for lord sugar the investment came hand in hand but i came for lord sugar's network his connections his advice like he's the godfather of business he's the blueprint i came for him and i was dedicated to make an impression which is why it used to like really rub me the wrong way that he never knew my name like up until episode 10 he didn't know my name did he not no he didn't know it was karishma and that is my name instead of karishma it was Krishna, Charisma, I got production to write it on a piece of paper, put it in front of him.

5:36I was like, please get my name right. I've left my family, my man, my, you know, my business, everything to be here, please. And then come final. Now he knows my name, you know, which I love. Yeah. I don't think he's going to be forgetting it. I don't think many people that watched it are going to be forgetting it either. Tell us about the product, what it is for those that haven't watched The Apprentice, etc. Like, give us a rundown of it. So, Kishkin launched a year ago, and we started with our hero product, which is our Rose Up to the Rescue oil. Now, this is an anti-inflammatory... Have you got a bottle on you?

6:09I've already given it out to someone I bumped into in the street. I bought one for you, met a fan on the street and just had to. Like, they were like, I'm struggling with my skin. You've got lovely skin, so I'll get what's sent over. But just know that, like, I always have a bottle in my bag in case I run into someone that needs it. Because what we're doing is helping people actually find something that works. And people are just so skeptical because the skincare industry has earned nothing but distrust. What they do is pump millions into marketing and pennies into research and development. And that's not, we do it the other way around.

6:43We don't have millions, but thousands into research and development. And then the marketing, I look after myself because that's my, that's my, like, that's the nature of what I've done my whole life. And tell us a bit more about your personal story. I found it incredibly moving in the sort of penultimate episodes when, you know, because The Apprentice is TV production, it's entertainment, right? We know the sort of vibes about kind of being rude and short with people, etc. And then in the penultimate episode, it sort of all shifts and it becomes a little bit X factor, one might say, actually. But tell us your story.

7:16So I think it's so important to just like preface this all by saying when I applied, I had like nothing to lose. It was already the bottom of the barrel type of life that I was living. Like, it was like, what on earth could possibly go worse than this? Like, what could go wrong more than what's already happened? And I referenced a shipment of mine, my biggest shipment, my biggest investment till date, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. Because it was an uninsured shipment. Typhoon hit the ship. Everything just fell off the boat. And I was like, and they called me and told me this. I said, this cannot be real.

7:53Like, you've got to be joking. what is going on and they were like we're really sorry we can't claim this money back it was on uninsured shipment and i was just heartbroken and i just thought there's nothing i could physically do to get myself out of this i need help i need investment how much stock was that worth that went um it was around it was around 20 000 bottles 20 000 bottles of oil that would have sustained the year so that's what i had ordered and that was the money i had saved up from the sales that had come in it's really hard to be a profitable business in year one all my profits sank to the bottom of the sea what did you use it to fund the very early days with like where did you call the money together from so i've been working since i was 18 so i started working like dancing in the background and music videos i've always been a creative i was at uni just down the road from herest george's that's where I started dancing it was like a very very we want to see what you're what else you're good at I'm an academic I always have been but what else are you good at so at St George's I really started to thrive and I made some connections started dancing in these music videos started making like 50 60 pound a day yeah um then I started doing the makeup videos online it took off it took off and then I started getting brand campaigns when I started making brands thousands of pounds that's when I said I'm going to turn this into an agency so I became a social media marketing consultant brands hiring me and kind of like three days a week come in look after our socials look after everything the job I do now sorry the job I did then for other brands currently I have three people working under Kishkin doing the single job I used to do for brands back then so at 24 I was doing more than kids are doing now that I'm hiring people with like I kid you not marketing masters like masters in marketing degrees and I'm sat here thinking why don't you know how to do this or why have I not seen the impact of your education I really do believe experience over education like with skincare yes I have a science background yes I have studied dermatology but I went through the skin struggles which is why people believe it and buy into it.

10:07I went through the struggle which is why people see this as a personal win. People that have gone through you know the story of like the immigrant parent, the struggle, the rent is due, what could possibly be worse than this? Like we need to turn our luck around. I think that's why people are relating to me because I walked in so fearless, there was nothing to lose. Like so how can I be scared? and i think it's an amazing story right and you had kind of acne aged 18 that was the sort of origin the ignition for the idea yeah so i i think everything happens for a reason it's so full circle and i know it sounds cliche but had i not had acne wouldn't have started documenting my journey online wouldn't be sat here with half a million followers today you know and even though in the application process itself I never want it to be known that I'm a social media content creator just in case it slightly skews my chance of getting in I never let it be known so once I was on the show and then they were like look we have to do background checks and I said okay well here's my social media and they were like hey so you're you you've done this before like you know you understand this industry and I said okay like this is this is not why I came here but I just wanted you to know that I'm a business person I'm not just a content creator or influencer or whatever you want to call it.

11:25So business first always, and that's how I've done it. And it's very full circle now that, you know, sat here in Tooting, where it all started, you know, but had I not had that skin struggle at 18, I would not have done any of this. None of it, not Kishkin, not social media, not The Apprentice. And tell us about Kishkin then. Let's talk about the business side of it, right? You talked about the people. Give us a breakdown of who you're employing, what they're doing, et cetera. You mentioned the three people doing the one job that you used to do like what are you looking for when you're hiring people as well in my opinion the background of kishkin is social media it's all about storytelling and there's people i've tried to put into my business that helped me tell the story of kishkin when you're running it it's really hard to be everywhere i'm sure you understand that so well you know you're going to be a cleaner one day and marketing expert the next like it's all over the place so for me at the moment our our hires are kind of looking heavily around social media.

12:21Then, of course, we have the warehouse staff that make it all happen. You know, if someone orders something and it's not there in 48 hours, that's complaints, that's refunds, that's money, I've not made it. So there's that. So at the moment, it's a very basic business plan if you think about it. We have our manufacturing in Korea, Hong Kong, Chile. Everything comes here and then it comes to the warehouse and then it's packed and dispatched. We have our influencer marketing, UGC stuff. We have now, we're working with Amstrad Digital, who's doing all of our online digital marketing, who I hired before I got hired, by the way.

12:56Like, I hired to show Lord Sugar. I know what's about to happen. But let me just hire them so I can show you my vote of confidence in what the Amstrad brand. Yeah. So I hired them, negotiated them from, like, all the way down. And I said, price match, please. Price match, what else is in the industry right now? They did. and then yeah now we're all good to go like as a business we have what we need to thrive yeah and how did it end up being um where was it you said it's produced chili hong kong korea how did that how do you go about creating the skincare brand and then scouring the world for where to get it produced so we initially went through multiple i knew what the product needed to be i knew it needed to be a rose hip seed oil pure 100 cold pressed started researching into manufacturers of this oil started looking into the most potent versions species of this plant and scientists and lab developers and all these people got involved and what this is why I mean by I spent thousands on just research and after trying it testing it they give out to focus groups they collect information and data and then you come down to the one that is the hero product and that one was the Chilean extract and it's the most expensive the most potent and the most powerful so that is what we bottled and started selling within months we start seeing like genuinely i know it's just skin and maybe like it doesn't mean the same to someone who hasn't gone through it but it's a miracle what it's done for people's skin if you think about young girls you got any daughters just the three yeah just the three are any of them like teenagers no no they're all under six they're all under six right there'll be an age yep she's gonna turn 16 17 18 and she's going to be looking at the pretty girls online and if she does have skin concerns, she's going to think, damn, like, what do I do?

14:48Why don't I look like her? That is who I was at 18 and that is who Kishkin is for now. I'm going to call out my daughter and wife on this because they both picked you really early as their favourite and were like, she's going to whip. And genuinely, my wife was so on it. And it's the first year actually that my six year old has watched it with us. And I thought to myself at the end of it all, I was like, it has been an amazing vehicle for social mobility, actually. Sometimes people get a bit kind of like from the business world, can get a bit snobby about The Apprentice, right? Oh, it's TV, it's entertainment, et cetera.

15:27And yes, it is all those things. But I look at your story and some of the stories of other people, and this is a sort of, this is a moonshot for you now that you're on, right? the rocket ship left last Thursday. Like there's no limit to what you can achieve now, right? Exactly. And I think, you know, Lord Sugar's told me I'm a call away. Nothing is off the table. So for me, like as a brand without The Apprentice, the way my plan was, you know, I anticipated that we'd have very strong sales by this point. I anticipated that we'd have a viral social presence and, you know, I anticipated these things.

16:01I just didn't know how I'd get there like it would be like through campaigns and tick tock and instagram and posting relentlessly and doing all the creative shoots and like I have a really creative background so I know I can do it but with the apprentice I've got millions of eyes that I didn't have to like pay like through digital marketing slash find them stumble upon my content online I've just been given the platform here you go do well and it will be yours so you know as much as people think like oh you did well on the apprentice and now your business has taken off no i did well for 12 weeks on the apprentice a process designed to put you under immense amounts of pressure none of them are idiots none of the 20 candidates are idiots i promise you that much they're all very highly educated entrepreneurial beings that have like succeeded in their own realms of business and now they're at the apprentice like because they need the investment or they need the publicity or whatever some came for the fame some came for the game right so in my opinion none of these people are idiots and the way the show is set up it is kind of you know here's six minutes to design it though you know like you're not going to be able to perform well under pressure unless you are the type of person who does that but also i think it's something that's so true about being an entrepreneur right if you think of each of the episodes as like mini hackathons like yeah I feel about when we started Jimmy's Jobs and whatever I didn't have a clue about branding or podcast artwork design or whatever like and it was all a bit basically and then you had a sales head of marketing as well as head of talent like in some ways I actually think it sums up the messiness of the entrepreneurship journey quite well like most people don't know what they're doing when they start out in lots of different domains that is part of the point of being an entrepreneur right i think the process is actually the most like the person who's going to get far and i'm not talking about myself i'm talking about generally candidates people that made it far were people that have like understood what it takes to run a business from scratch like no handouts no daddy's money they did it they did the logos they did it under time pressure they spoke to manufacturers they negotiated firsthand all of these things you know and that is how you get far because you know how to do it so like you will never be put in an alien situation lord sugar will never put you in a situation that is too far away from reality you know you might not be looking for shops in hong kong but you could very much be speaking to a manufacturer in hong kong negotiating prices it's very like you're not given an impossible task all of them are possible tasks it's just that instead of having a day or two or a month to prepare a campaign or whatever you have 12 minutes what was your favorite task my favorite task was the designing a water brand yes I was p.m.

18:52it was very early on it was week four I by no means wanted to be p.m. this early because I was learning yes how does production work what the candidates like how do I do this like you know with like the tasks and learning on the job pretty much like what it takes to win as PM. Learning how, you know, how to speak in boardroom and defend your name and stuff. So, but task four was like, here, here, here's a task made to your DNA. Like, like what could I ask for? A social media task, designing something, a creative one, editing, filming, all of these things. Second nature. My first language. What was your least favorite one?

19:34My least favorite was probably flowers. Just like, not the idea of like selling in public, but just have zero interest in like that kind of stuff. Like there's no create, there was no like method. Standing in the street and screaming and shouting, okay. Do you know what I mean? That's fine. I've done it for Kishkin. I've done it in exhibitions and it's great. But I just thought there was like, it lacked like creative, like the kind of like stuff that I think works nowadays. Do you give any feedback to the kind of production crew? They don't need feedback. They've been doing it for 20 years. A lot of the people on production have been there for years and years and years, and they are not your friends.

20:12They are not your friends. They might have their favorites. Like, I do think, like, with me, every driver that took us from A to B was Sir. And I always called them Sir. Every man on production was Sir, and every woman on production. unless she was younger than me. I spoke to her respectfully and like, I just think that production thought that like, not, not that they thought the world of me or anything like that, but they just thought, what a kind girl, what is she doing here? Because everyone else is like cocky and like making all these jokes of production. And like, I was just there like the quiet one, like, thank you, sir.

20:48Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Like just for everything. And I just think they thought she's in the wrong room, man. So what is the process? Because they are recruiting now, right, for future series we always put out right at the end of the final series if you want to be the future ones tell us about the kind of like process to just get to that first episode so applications is a written application so you're going to type up why you think you're good at business why you think you should be launching as partner what is your business idea what makes you unique etc like very standard questions um you then go away to like the vbc buildings and there's like 300 people suited and booted everyone looks incredible everyone looks ready to be on camera and everyone's looking at each other like who what's your business idea what's your business idea i still remember like meeting this like incredible guy i don't even know if he remembers that he sat next to me now but he i asked him what's your business plan and he's like yeah i have an ai like some kind of like ai marketing thing and i was like yeah like he's probably gonna win the show he didn't even get past the first round of interviews because they just want like they actually want entertaining people like not saying it's not entertaining but you want people that will put on a show yeah and like the first round of interviews you go in with like 30 people everyone has like 10 seconds or 30 seconds to pitch themselves based on those 30 seconds they will take like five out of the 30 and the five out of the 30 they get taken to the next round and everyone else goes down a lift and goes home so it's almost like an x-factor process that'd be quite interesting Yeah, it's a very brutal interview process.

22:27Like, one minute you're sat with someone, next minute, like, you're waving them goodbye, and they're gone. And, like, they're just wondering, oh, my God, like, it could be you that goes, like, onto the show and stuff. Like, just thousands of people leaving that building at once. Yeah, yeah. Everyone came prepared. And what was it like picking the people at the end as well for the final show? How was that? so between the semi-final and the final there was about three down days we're like there's no filming we're just chilling at home and like me and Pasha we've like had multiple conversations about who we think should come back and will come back and who we think we'd pick so that picking process was very strategic because I knew there were some people that we both wanted back and we would like swoop up and then there were some people like that she got along with more and then there's people that i got along with more that i knew were like i'm gonna end up with this person because i want them and she doesn't yeah so like this the picking process is very strategic do you know i mean it's like it's like school when you have to like pick like captain of like football and stuff like that like it was like that so but it was nice to see everyone again and like know that they are now there for your best interest and they got the choice would you like to come back for the final if you're coming back please make sure you bring your a-game because someone else's future depends on it yeah there's a huge difference between first and second place when it comes to the apprentice because lord sugar only has the energy for one he only only only has due diligence to one yeah you know so it's like you either come second or your life changes yeah you know not saying it doesn't for second place but in the last couple of days i've just seen what i'm talking about right now it's weird so what is what has happened the last five days what's been the thing that would surprise people the most i think i think what surprised people the most is that immediately day after the final lord sugar's calling me up saying when i when when you come into my office like let's talk what's next right i go to his office he's like right we're feeling we're filming tiktoks today what tiktok would you want me to film he's so game yeah for my world this is not his world like trust me i've met his social media team i've met everyone now and they're just like they are very used to like news outlets and other forms of media and now it's like tiktok and instagram and seven second videos and things that are like fun to watch and with viral potential and it's a different world to them all yeah and then there's me who just would be like hey lord sugar let's do a secret handshake posted it like an hour ago it's already gone viral like it's i know what will work for lord sugar but i'm not his manager ultimately so i can't control it but i just think that like the last couple of days have been an incredible thank you god thank you to the country thank you to everyone that's bought a bottle of our products we've now got three products sales have been outstanding have you just been like sat there refreshing so they've rebuilt my website on shopify and now every time i get a sale there's a coin drop sound and like every three seconds it's like ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching and like my family would be like counting the seconds between each ka-ching like just as a game now like when i tell you but there There was days, in fact, there was 100 days where I would be up at 3am trying to speak to each customer trying to get a single sale.

26:02Yeah. Like, hey, if this doesn't work, you'll get your money back. Just give it a shot. Like, me trying to give people consultations at 3 in the morning, just trying to sell a single bottle. And that was the reality of the business for months. For months, like 20 orders going out a week, Royal Mail sending like a tiny courier van and now they're sending us lorries. Sonny's getting very excited about some of the clips that you can use for the intro here. I think you're going to have about an eight minute intro, Sonny. What do we need to do to inspire young entrepreneurs? What's the next step? Because it is hard, right?

26:41Every entrepreneur has been there when it's not working. Elon Musk says it's like chewing glass. And at times I can totally appreciate that. What do we need to do to inspire a generation? I think no one's telling them the truth. I wish someone told me the truth. I just think there's a massive secret around business. And I think that secret is don't use your own money. I think everyone thinks that I need to save up 100k like I did at 24. So I'd saving up every penny, like said 100k is what it would take. I could have launched Kishkin and 5k. I could have and just kept the ball rolling and rolling and rolling.

27:20but I waited for perfection I waited to be polished I waited to have enough in the bank account it was not required you don't need it and do just think go to the bank get a loan go to an investor get help ask for financial aid from whoever it needs like create a business plan the best thing that the apprentice did for me out of all the tasks and everything that I learned was the incentive to make a business plan and type it up because that gave me the direction that was very kind of like on a day by day basis like today what we're doing today what we're doing survival mode running a business on survival mode as opposed to what is the long term one year plan two year plan five year plan young people need to know don't use your own money don't risk your personal assets find help yeah what's the worst thing that you do lose banks money okay we'll pay you back in installments over the next 20 years i think there's also you're right in terms of like the dr pepper what's the worst that can happen right like whatever you do but also you're saying you know you could launch it for under five thousand pounds and whatever and i appreciate some people five thousand pounds particularly early 20s can still be a lot of money but actually you know that is it is achievable in the modern world with social media with these new tools to have a minimum viable product right that even 10 years ago yeah it might have been close to But things have changed now.

28:42Yeah. Just yesterday, me and my sister on the drive home from Lord Sugar's office designed an entire business around a digital product for her. You don't even need to be selling real stuff anymore. I don't need to sell a glass bottle of oil. I could sell a digital product 100 times over and make£20 ,000 a month. Yeah. Like, the world is completely advancing and evolving every single day. Young people in business get so hooked up on like, it needs to be perfect. And on social media, it needs to bang and it needs to go viral. It needs to get like all this traction. I say it because I know it and I felt it.

29:19I've been in that chair. And I'm just thinking, why was I so like scared to launch? I've delayed my launch by months because I thought it wasn't perfect. There was not even anyone watching. Like I'm acting like half, you know, like 3 billion people, half the world is watching over like i do think that spotlight theory is a really something that can catch people out with you catch everyone out yeah everyone i've met in business every single candidate on the apprentice that came with an idea should have had a business by now yeah i genuinely i was listening to them talk and i just kept thinking the difference between someone who's good at business and someone who's just just gonna like have a thought and will probably just have a thought for a really long time is that they don't know how to make fast decisions yes the speed of a decision is what makes a business person good yeah if you can't make a decision in a split second or three seconds even like i just think like that decision making that gut instinct in business is like in your dna or something and you learn it you learn it along the way and then it embeds itself into your dna but then you realize the value of like making decisions quick yeah like i just think that and i've just i'm watching like there'll be anyone applying to the show, your chances of winning, sorry, your chances of winning, if you've just like got it going, are a little bit higher.

30:40Yeah. Because you're not, it's not all talk. If you come with a great idea, it's still all talk. Yeah. You know, like just, you need, it doesn't need to be perfect and polished, but just start it. My biggest regret is starting when I was 28. I could have started when I was 24. Yeah. And I had the money, but instead I was like let me save more let me do better let me get the perfect sticker and the perfect glass bottle people were still buying it yeah people would still bought it um what is your advice for young people generally right because you are about to be invited back to your primary school your secondary school your university every school in the country probably want you to come what's your advice to the younger generation my advice would probably get me into like slightly some kind of trouble.

31:23I just think people are not going to agree 100%. I can only talk from my personal experience. Disclaimer, nobody canceled me for saying this. Experience outweighs education in my opinion, right? I went and did a degree in biomedical sciences down the road from here at one of the best universities in the country. I learned more from actually having acne, from going to GPs and dermatologists and being prescribed drugs and medication than I did studying the layers of the skin. And yes, it looks great that, oh wow, she's got a science background, but I learned more from actually suffering. You know, I did business studies for my GCSEs, learned the definition by the book of cashflow, don't know a single thing about how to make cash flow it's wild to me they teach you how they tell you what does tax mean what the dividends mean what are deductibles mean all of these things in the real world you have no idea how to pay your water bill it's crazy to me like nobody's asked my two cents on this but on the education system i'd change things but it's not my it's not my call if we want successful young people we need to change things yeah we really really do like they need to know like if you want to i know some people want the nine-to-five life some people want to work for someone and that is okay also but if you want to even one percent maybe you want to start a business but you're like getting stuck and dragged into the nine-to-five then you kind of are creating a slight cage for yourself um if you want to because you never will you'll always just make and spend and make and spend it's interesting that you sort of rail against the education side of it because you are actually like clever right?

33:10I'm a straight A student. Yeah. I got 100 % in every single one of my GCSE exams. I got seven A stars in three A's. Every single A was one UMS off an A star. I say this as a highly educated person. The education system, I can speak for it. I have a degree. I did, I was, I went to one of the best colleges in the country, St. Dominic's, and I went to an all-girls school and I was one of the top like three students in the whole school in years i did a uk cat medical school exam i was in the top decile of the country yeah like to the point where teachers were like we just don't understand how you did that that i'm saying this as somebody not to like you know i'm not trying to gas myself up here i've been through the education system and i've been a straight a student i've been a student that people call back for talks and stuff and all of that and i say with all my chest is unnecessary if you want to go into business.

34:02If you haven't felt it, you can't sell it. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur? No. What was the first ambition? I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor. And that is why I did all of that. You know, I wanted to do what I felt was the most noble deed in the world of saving lives. And when I realized, again, it kind of comes back to the system here. But when I realized doctors in this country are currently like on strike even like i know it gets into a bigger wider conversation they are not very happy people my sister's a doctor my best friend's a doctor my brother-in-law's a doctor my auntie's a cardiac surgeon my uncle's a cardiac surgeon i know the industry yeah when i say before i can talk on something i make sure i know it otherwise i wouldn't start speaking on it because i have no right to i know the industry i know the world i know what it looks like to be on the inside of medicine and the gmc and all of that and then i know what they look like on the outside and every single one of them is thinking about how do i make my money yeah because the cost of living yeah like the way this is all looping into like a very deep conversation to me like it's wild but just know that like in business there's no rules because you are the rule maker the only person that gives you the rules hmrc and tax people and yeah you got to do all those things right but what you do with your life and how you want to spend that money that you make of your profits and all of these things that you do like it comes down to like your vision yeah whereas like when you're in a system the vision is like very much here a b and c you must follow these rules otherwise you could lose your license your you know your privileges here and there like your position at work you can made redundant you can lose a job you get fired the only reason i started kishkin is because i lost my job i had a hundred thousand in the back i was a social media consultant for a very big company had like multi-million pound turnover every year they were make they were making people redundant left right and center i was a contractor so i thought okay i'm fine trained people under me till today people from that company messaged me saying there's not one person that's done a shoot like you there's not one not one person has walked into this building and done something exciting since you left and i left about three years ago four years ago but the money i earned from that opportunity when i got told by the director of that bit of that company and let me tell you how i got that job i was 24 i walked in in tracksuit bottoms just like this okay i want to ask about these the tracksuit you're wearing because it's very fetching um i don't believe in the need to wear a suit when i'm trying to speak to like powerful and successful men like yourself like i just you know you do have to in the boardroom but like my first job at 24 after covid i came out of uni it was covid couldn't really do anything for a couple years straight after i was like okay what do I do now to make money social media is doing great I'm confident let me turn this into a business I become a consultant I walk into this multi-million pound like company they want one social media video for me and they want to offer me 500 pounds I'm like okay your social media suck I don't want to make a video for you guys I could scream and shout about your company from the rooftops no one's gonna buy a single thing he's like why I said because look at your social media it's like it's like very very poor not one thing about this makes me want to follow you or work with you I don't want to work with you you're writing me a check but I don't want to work with you because there's nothing about this that I want to represent and they said what would you do and I said one two three hire me like that's it gave them three bullet points as to what they need to do next and then I left that conversation in my tracksuit bottom with a 60 ,000 pound base wage like job right and like i was 24 i shouldn't even be making 25 grand i shouldn't even be making 21 like at that time but like i sold myself to that guy he bought it i left that conversation thinking shit how am i just pull this off it was wild and then i decided actually my day rate is 400 pounds and i started like invoicing them like crazy because they needed me more and more and more because I started making them more and more and more money.

38:10A few years went by. I've now trained people, made them as good as me. What do I get? Hey, Grush Maddangs, you're a bit too expensive with the company. We don't need you. I remember those words like it was yesterday. We don't need your services. And I said, okay, that's fine. And I walked out and I started Kishkin within a couple of months because I never, ever will have someone tell me they don't need you. I can tell and I'm definitely buying. It's an amazing story. What's the one question you like to ask people when you're interviewing them to assess their kind of drive? I think it would be, why do you do it?

38:54Why do you do it? And why do you do it again and again and again? Because if you can't do something again and again and again, then the motivation is there. like if i can go to despite of having the education that i do in the background that i do i go every single morning and i pack boxes why because now i can have staff there was a time where i couldn't afford it and i did it every single day for hours like the the mastery of taping a box is within my reach like i am the master of tape and box making but i am somebody with a biomedical sciences degree from St George's University and went to a great school and all of these things but I go every single day and pack boxes because that is what drives me I am selling product that works unlike the other skincare brands that are selling you dreams yeah um I quite enjoy doing some of the stuff that you do right at the beginning as well like it's there's elements of it that are quite old school so how many people are you employing currently we have four permanent staff and we have about 10 people in the warehouse trying to panic and get these orders out right now got about 7 000 orders for them to do and they are just they're trying their best you're gonna need to go back and pack some boxes if you could say one thing to government right we have a lot of politicians a lot of policymakers that listen to this show what's the one thing you would like them to hear the way we have maths english science geography, history, let's have one subject about money management.

40:30Just one. One hour, once a week, teach the kids how the hell to make money, how the hell to keep money, how to turn it into more money, how to protect their financial interests. That's what we ask. I know I'll be doing it for my kids. I know I do it now for my younger siblings. I know that I wish someone told them. So talk to us a bit about the production you mentioned there, how you're kind of like very um polite and respectful of them like i ask this now running a small kind of production company in box like i suppose like how many people are involved what are all their different jobs what are they kind of telling you to do do they do they sort of direct that much so there is different sides of production you've got house production they make sure we don't kill each other in the house and like we're all friends and it's okay and there's no drama and problems and then there's obviously like pds and producers and all of those types of production and runners that are like the background of the show that nobody'd like thanks in the end like these 21 year olds are fresh out of uni and like want to get into the world of tv and they're just like do you need a coffee what do you need like it's crazy um but i think what it is it's definitely not overproduced to show like a lot of people like oh it seems scripted there's just no way like no they could put me and jimmy in a room they couldn't tell me and jimmy what to talk about do you know they might say krishma ask jimmy how his day is going but how your day is going is up up to you yeah so like in that way they can maneuver conversation but they cannot like orchestrate conversation yeah do you know i mean so that is uh something very interesting about production but also like production understands nobody will watch the show unless they create certain like scenarios yeah you know like one minute you have like like five minutes left and the next thing you know you have 30 seconds within 30 seconds of the five minutes left warning you have 30 seconds left like stuff like that you know like it's not always fair but it is designed to bring out the best in you like and that is their job because otherwise no one would watch the show you know do the phone calls really come in at 4am in the house uh yes the phone calls if it's a cooking task come in 2 30 3 a.m like super super early it's still like the like bum crack of dawn man like it's so early in the day and i just hated waking up and like just having to like run immediately like no coffee no like you know just like zen time in the morning like little like walk around the room no immediately you're up and you're running and like you know you just have no energy left and you're just completely on survival mode constantly.

43:12It's very real. You get a phone call, the person who is going to receive the phone call gets told the night before. They know that they need to pick up a phone call and then you run up and you wake everyone up and that's all in like a natural reaction. But the person who's going to answer the phone knows to answer the phone. And then how does the recording, so you record for a day, two days then how how long did you get off to kind of recover if at all so most tasks would have two days of filming and then boardroom day boardroom day would be so long you go out to this like like studios in like west london somewhere and then you are sat for like hours and everyone's just eating and like stress eating and like smoking like not enough cigarettes in the world honestly for that that thing that task i mean boardroom stress and then yeah you go into the boardroom and then there's a break and then they call for lunch and then it's like you know you go into the bridge cafe if you lost otherwise you go home and then they film like segments of people coming back and then like it's just so long boardroom day filming these task days are much more fun you're up and you're about like there's no waiting around it's constant like movement whereas like boardroom is like wait and wait and wait and waits well that's not the that's not the penultimate that's every episode the board every episode really so a whole day to the boardroom yeah and the boardroom is like at multiple hours long but like you get there in the morning Baroness Brody and Tim need to brief Lord Sugar on the ins and outs of what happened so that when we tell our stories they must align with what they've said and then Lord Sugar will ask the questions that missing pieces of information to like really get to the bottom of stuff if something's like a talking point he'll have it written down like this needs to be discussed why did this happen which is really good because like for me it worked out because Baroness Brody always made sure that I was kind of vocal in there.

45:27Like, I think a lot of candidates had tried to, like, pin, like, not pin things on me, but it was like, well, no, like, it wasn't our fault. And she was sub-team leader, so it must be hers. So are Tim and Karen giving you much advice then? Because that doesn't come across in the show. They don't say a single word. Not a single word. Like, they'll say, you have five minutes left. You know, stuff like that. or they'll say you know something to encourage the direction in which you're going but they don't give you advice they cannot like they need to watch you in your natural environment yeah yeah who did you prefer tim i think tim is more relatable and i would be a lot more like calm and his body language speaks a lot more so like i can tell if he's enjoying an idea but with Baroness Brady she is my favorite of all three of them because Baroness Brady just like I don't know if I'll ever cross paths with her again but just I know like the aura that that woman has like she walks into a room like I will be more nervous to speak to her than I speak to Lord Sugar like Lord Sugar can have a laugh with him now but Baroness Brady like I feel like I need to bow down almost like your highness like I don't know why I don't know why she's just an incredible women so what what's the kind of like you've obviously had fans supporters customers before the show like what have been some of the comments that have been left since winning i've been really lucky with the comments i think majority of the comments are around you know i had you picked out from the beginning or something like that or this was great how did you think of that this is very smart and there's obviously like a few hate comments or you know you should have done this differently or you could have done this better.

47:13Now that, you know, I think a lot of people forget, like when I was on the show, it was five months of Kishkin. And now it's been a year and a half of Kishkin. And in that year, I've turned the brand around myself without people even knowing I'm on The Apprentice. Like before the actual airing of the show started, Kishkin was already very successful. Maybe not in the first five months because we were just a startup. We're just an idea that has just like, you know, convinced a few people to buy a few bottles. But that whole year after the filming process, I was on it. Because I know Logic is watching.

47:47So I was working overtime. Just like trying to make sure I can give him something to be convinced about. Like, yes, okay, she's right. Like, this is the girl. You know? So now people are watching her back and they're like, oh my God, we're so proud of you. You've come so far. Your dad must be so proud. He is so proud. Not just because of the show, but because of what I've shown my dad in the last year. Like, you're a businessman. So am I. Yeah. You raised me well, you know? So the comments are very, very personal to me. Like my whole life has been live on social media for years. I make sure people know that it's not pretty and it's not perfect.

48:22And I think people like the transparency. So most comments I get is around like, just thank you for being like honest about how it really is and how hard business can be. And thank you for being yourself. And then there's a few haters that feel like it's necessary to like body shame me. And it's like, listen, I was the fashion icon of the season. So you can try your best, but I know. Karishma, thank you so much for coming on Jimmy's Jobs in the future. It's been a real pleasure. I think we should get you back in like a year. You liked it, you enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. I mean, I loved you before the final, but having just had 40 minutes with you, I love you even more.

49:00I think that was brilliant. I think you are credit to the show, credit to the country, and credit to enterprise and business. So yeah, I want you back. And maybe we could do you with Lord Sugar as well. I think that'd be quite interesting. That would be. And I love you too.

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