Why Going On The Apprentice Changed Their Careers

0:00What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnell and this is Screw It Just Do It, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. I was a silent assassin when I was on the show. I was 22 years old when the show was being filmed and everyone else was around, I think, 28, 30. And I looked quite young as well. So I was constantly thinking, am I too young to be here? And I always grew up with this innate fire. I want to start my own business, but I didn't know what to do. and The Apprentice was the closest thing I could think of.

0:38I have to admit, coming from UK Garage of Music, I would never, ever, ever have gone on TV had my brother not passed away. When he passed, something in me just shifted. And I'm a big believer in squeezing out every ounce of purpose and talent and possibility that you've gotten yourself and the time you've got left. I'm at home, working on my business, put something on in the background, it was The Apprentice, and at the end of the episode, Sugar pops up. He says, you think you could do better next year? Apply now. And I thought, you know what? I can do better next year. I would easily say it's the best thing I've ever done.

1:10And my God, had I known the doors it would have opened, I would have done it way sooner. Well, good morning, everybody. We have got a very exciting panel for you guys. As you can tell, I'm excited to be here. I'm James Burt. I'll be curating this conversation for the next couple of minutes. We are talking all about a very famous TV show. We're talking about The Apprentice this morning. So these three lovely famous faces that you might recognize off your TV screens have been through the process of The Apprentice. We're going to talk about the highs, the lows, the truths, the myths and the benefits and maybe some of the less beneficial sides of doing massive TV.

1:50Interestingly, Sabrina and Daniel were actually on the same year together. So were you on the same team or opposition? A few times. A few times. Of course, yeah, because they picked up. We like each other, though. And they actually did a challenge one week, which is actually based at the NEC. So it's nice that it's all gone full circle. It's positive, but it's also brought back a little bit of trauma. Yeah, you're trauma bonded to the NEC arena. So first and foremost, then, let's sort of go down the line. What on earth made you guys want to do The Apprentice in the first place? Yes, it's on the TV screens and yeah, there's all the benefits as part of that.

2:26But obviously, it's a mixed bag putting yourself out there into the public sphere. So, Trey, you first. Why The Apprentice? Do you know what? I have to admit, coming from UK Garage of Music, I would never, ever, ever have gone on TV had my brother not passed away. So my brother was the other half of the band, Architects. He passed away from COVID in 2020. And when he passed, something in me just shifted. and I'm a big believer in squeezing out every ounce of purpose and talent and possibility that you've got in yourself and the time you've got left and when he passes I don't know how long I've got and I really just wanted to make a difference especially with men because you know men are so vulnerable at the moment like very very vulnerable and my brother was an example of that you know he lived alone he got sick he didn't know he had covid because it was early but he didn't go to the doctors do anything didn't go hospital and one day he literally just dropped down and the police found his body at the bottom of the stairs and after that I was like now I'm done and there's going to be certain things that come up for me that are going to be uncomfortable and again coming from UK garage doing what's looked like reality tv is like no it's not cool enough but I thought sod it so my wife actually applied and something in me just said Trey you need to go and apply as well and then that's it that's how I ended up there I literally wanted to be able to make a difference and I thought let me get the biggest audience I possibly can so I was like it's a no brainer and I think nowadays for all of us entrepreneurs it's very important that we make ourselves as visible as possible so that way it was simple as that I just really wanted to make a difference.

4:03Nice talking about visibility and someone who knows all about it from the world of PR but you're in the world of tennis at this point in time why the apprentice for you Sabrina? I actually didn't know that about you so I'm sorry to hear that but I'm glad that you're creating at impact. I had a really happy story of why I wanted to apply. So ever since I was eight years old, every single night, no one could talk in the house and I'd watch the show and I became really obsessed. And my mom's Indian. So I'm looking at anyone else in Asian, but in the audience, I was down to become a doctor, a lawyer and to go to Oxford.

4:37And that was my only options. And I always grew up with this innate fire. I want to start my own business, but I didn't know what to do and the apprentice was the closest thing i could think of so walking in it was so surreal because i've watched watch yoga since i was eight and i was on the show when i was 22 so that was multiple different years of actually wanting to create a childhood dream so you watched it every day from when why what initially because most kids are watching like telly tubbies old school reference their telly tubbies um but you're watching cartoons or whatever why on earth did a slightly miserable middle-aged guy or old guy appeal to an eight-year-old kid like that's what I want to do so I'm I'm 29 now so probably around 2000 ish the show came out and back then we had YouTube we had Tony Robbins Brendan Burchard but there were no females on YouTube so the only content I consumed was middle-aged men that's all I knew so I was so obsessed about learning and creating in my year that we were both on together we had eight million views a week so I was getting stopped like 40 50 times a day just walking down the street and we had I think 65 000 people apply in our year so for whatever reason they chose us to and it was it was incredible wow and Daniel why why the apprentice feud did you already have the concept of revival at that point in time so it's gonna be the catalyst to give this the promotion that it needed to to pop or was it something else revival was certainly a business at that time but it wasn't kind of the trajectory.

6:11So I was actually working as a trader for an investment bank in London. Right. I didn't declare my business, and I didn't realize you had to. So I got fired for gross misconduct. I was escorted out of the building, and I had no job. I went from making really good money to sat at home with a business turning over about a hundred pound a day at the time. It wasn't enough to live on. I thought, shit. So you got sat from the day job? I got fired from being a banker, from being a trader. Wow. For having a shop company on the side. For having this company, which I didn't declare. So I'm at home, working on my business, put something on in the background it was the apprentice and at the end of the episode sugar pops up he says you think you could do better next year apply now and i thought you know what i can do better next year so i applied and that was this that was the story really wow so it wasn't you you hadn't been watching it like sabine had for decades and it was your lifelong aspiration it's just like i've been sacked alan sugar is my company now in the living room i'm trying to build this business i'm going i think i can do better pretty much when i was younger it was more Teletubbies.

7:05Fine. I'm glad it wasn't just me. What was the most valuable lesson that you got from the process, whether it was from working with other people, whether it was taking the feedback, whether it's from a particular task, or maybe it was something, you know, I don't want to put words in your mouth. What was the most valuable bit of it? Because I appreciate that, you know, a week's worth of content, 20 hours a day, 140 hours of filming gets compressed into 58 minutes that we get to see as a highlight reel what was the what was the uh the most valuable part of the process we'll come to you first Sabrina so for me I always knew that I wanted to start something and what for the apprentice is we have a new task every single week which means we've got no experience in what we're doing but we have to make money and this was really powerful for me because when lockdown happened I lost both of my incomes overnight I wasn't able to pay my rent and within that two weeks I was able to create a new company that paid my rent and that's all I could think about so for me I know I can make money providing I solve a problem if I lost everything and that was really powerful to actually go through that experience two years later not being able to know how I was going to pay for my food and to put in context I was running a six figure tennis tournament company I was a presenter I was making quite good money at my age so for me i know no matter what happens in the future i'm resilient enough to make money and i'd love to share that because sometimes we get so wound up in our businesses even if they're not projecting the right way if you lost everything could you start again and yes you can and you didn't have that mentality before you went into it you didn't have that muscle because you hadn't been forced to you know turn a quid every week well tennis was all i knew i was brought up as a tennis player i was a tennis coach i was running a tennis events company yes i had you know a few things that were going apart from this i had an mba but i didn't know how to make money and i didn't grow up with money so knowing that whatever happened i could make it and it flows was a huge huge lesson and even now some months we make amazing and some months we don't but i know the month is going to come because money flows nice daniel most valuable lesson for you um I guess it's that kind of dependency on other people so I think these guys could probably relate kind of when you start off your company you're in charge of every kind of facet of it you're in control of every facet of it you then get thrust into this process whereby you're working with people everyone's an entrepreneur everyone wants to be in charge and you're very fragmented in terms of what you're doing on a daily task right so you could go away with an idea think you're going to go that direction the other team thinking they're going to go in another direction you get to the boardroom and you find out it's all gone to shit so it's that dependency on other people and trying to coordinate that i think that was the interesting thing to see and to manage does it does it make you want to in those environments it make you want to step up so you can control the environment or do you does it teach you more about how to step back and allow others to step into their greatness i guess it's both right you've got to understand the people that you're working with yeah i think you know on one task there can't be two captains uh There's got to be someone in charge and there's got to be other people who can take direction.

10:19So I think it's knowing when to push and knowing when to pull in those situations. Yeah, nice. Trey, most valuable lesson for you, my friend? Most valuable lesson, I'd probably say certainty. I think people who watch that show, sometimes people look at everyone and they laugh. These guys are all stupid. When I tell you, it's probably, you guys would agree with this, the hardest thing you can do is go on that show because you literally have no sleep. You're away from your family. It's like being in the SAS. they take away your phone your watch you have absolutely nothing and the only thing you have is yourself and your certainty so you have to lean into your authenticity because you can't be anyone but yourself anyone that tries to do that it's too long to pretend to be something else and you got to lean into integrity and I think you know you just said something there you're working with people who have all different levels of intellectual ability different level of experience and in that moment you have to not just come from this egocentric self you have to actually work as a team and you need certainty to do that like it doesn't matter what I'm in we're going to succeed in this you know it's a level of resilience and power I think I got from being certain of who I am and coming out of that I'm like there is nothing life can throw at me that I won't be able to navigate I mean nothing that's how good that experience is I think how do you navigate that because because I've noticed in the show like you you've got unwavering certainty in yourself and you and I have worked privately on other stuff together.

11:42And again, you just know that you're going to succeed, but it never comes from ego. I never get that sense. So how do you walk that tightrope of, I am certain this is the right thing, but not come at it from an egoic perspective? I think you have to have a level of integrity with who you are from a purpose point of view. And who I am from a purpose point of view is that other people get their greatness, including myself. So it's automatically a service thing. so rather than look at someone who may not know what they're doing it's like how can i serve this person i give an example before i mentor a lot of people and the producer said to me trey you're a mentor and a coach whatever you do do not mentor these guys because they're your competition and from the day first i got in i was doing that like literally some people that would have left the show had i not mentored them and it's just been in integrity with yourself and your intention i love that people get their greatness and they operate at the highest level for themselves and as long as you're doing that nothing nothing that happens is gonna derail you in any way shape form i'm just very very certain and what i love about it because you know when they when you see on the show and they get you up in the morning you've got 20 minutes to get ready you bloody well do have 20 minutes to get ready in a girl like oh i don't know how the girls did it i'm like actually sean she was staying in a room with me she'd get up at 3 a.m get ready go back to sleep and then when they came into the room at 4 a.m she'd be half ready it's it's mad so you're then having to operate with so much certainty because everything you know is taken away from you and then you're doing a task about I don't know making cheesecakes or something you have no knowledge in and all you've got is a certainty of right I know I can work with people I know I'm competent and confident and I know I'm just going to give it my all and kill it and I think the people who try to have a tactic of this me me me they went out the process but the people who had the tactic of this us together how can we win those people did well and again it's just about having integrity with who you are and doing it consistently, being yourself consistently.

13:36Was there a point, and I'll come to you first with this one, Daniel, is there a point where you thought this has really gone wrong and not just a task has gone wrong or not just like you're the PM on that, or you're going to get pulled back into the boardroom. Was there a point where you thought this is going to be reflected so badly that this is going to damage my brand after the fact? I mean, not necessarily in that respect, but I think if... I made it sound a bit too dramatic there sorry no no if you're looking for a macro sense i think one of the things that you come to realize is you're working with individuals right and the guy that you're on the task or the girl that you're on the task with who's patting your back who's on your side they go into the board room and to see them switch that's interesting and that's you know when you see it unfold for the first time or you're involved in it for the first time i think that's a real shift because it all goes from being very very powerly everyone's on the same team so you've got to tear this person apart to stay in the process and the claws come out and that's a very interesting thing and they They go back to the house with them half an hour later in the car like, come on then, just share a cab back.

14:33And then you're literally in the bed next to them and the next morning you're hugging your back on task with them. Yeah, yeah. A crazy rollercoaster of emotions. Yeah, absolutely. What about you, Trey? When something goes wrong? Yeah, or did something go wrong that was so that you thought this is bad in the wider context? I never did that. And I think I had the advantage of having been in the music business and had success because there were people in there thinking when I come out, I mean, like people literally looked at it like it's some way of me getting famous. And I was saying to them, guys, nobody cares.

15:02Nobody cares about you. And you had to kill your ego in this. I never thought about how am I going to look like to the outside world? Because they're going to edit you and do whatever. All you can do is be as good as you can. And that's where you've got to go on. So I never had this sense of worry around that. But I mean, we had one incident. I can't remember what it was where I'm not going to say the other contestants name. but you could just see it going wrong and she was actually instructed by Lord Sugar that no one should help her and it would have been so easy to just sort of left her on her own and I tried so much to really really make a difference and I had no idea I was going to come across on TV because you could easily come across either you're being condescending or whatever it was but again it's back to certainty of just like what do I want I actually just want to do my very best and my intention was never to be in the boardroom like do so so well to never be in a boardroom because you know it's like even if you lose if you can show that you gave everything you either weren't going to be brought back or good luck to whoever was going to bring you back because you could demonstrate that again it just goes back to certainty you know so I never saw it as anything going wrong because the harder things were the stronger you became like if that makes sense like the harder things were the stronger you performed that was my experience what about you Sabrina it's interesting i don't feel like anything from the show would have put me in that place of not being happy with what's going out but i was a silent assassin when i was on the show and daniel laughs i was 22 years old when the show was being filmed and everyone else was around i think 28 30 and i constantly and i looked quite young as well so i was constantly thinking am i too young to be here and lord sugar was saying you are very young and that was just really going into my limiting beliefs I see a few younger faces in the audience and I wish I had more self-confidence in that stage and it was only when I was brought into the final three and it was Karen and Claude who were actually backing me up compared to me having to back myself up that I knew I was in the right place so for me it was being more confident and taking bigger risks nice and I want to say something about it you know I really take my hat off to you because for the young people on the show i always thought to myself you know when you take everything away from you that of google all you've got is your knowledge i just felt with the people that are younger the disadvantages they had when it came to tasks that you knew nothing about so the fact that you actually did so well says a lot about your character that's incredible thank you incredible it's not easy that process i had got a few tactics though because i'd watch so many episodes oh she's an expert so this helps for 16 years she knew every tactic going um did the show i'm going to chuck this one to all of you actually.

17:44Trey, we're going to start with you first, because I'd be really interested to know your take on it. Obviously, in the moment, and you mentioned Sabrina, you know, 8 million people are watching per week. It's at the height of it. It's probably before socials had popped as much as they have now, and attention is more disparate. But in the moment and in the immediate aftermath, I guess that the show helps because your profile is raised, people know who you are, etc. But as there sort of looking back at the whole thing did the apprentice help or hinder you from a business perspective was there doors that were like no you're the you're the reality tv guy you're the reality tv goal so did it help you get in the door or did it close the door quicker do you think trey i'll come to you first i think we'll probably know the answer with you because they are invited you back and yeah i would easily say it's the best thing i've ever done and i think for all of us we're all in the final right i think that mitigated the fact that people might have seen it as reality tv because people knew it took a level of competence to do well in a show like that.

18:42People who really know would know that, you know, there's been banana skins thrown in. So you look more silly than you are, but they know it takes them to be like that. And my God, had I known the doors it would have opened, like I would have done it way sooner. I can't believe I was even thinking, should I do it? Should I not? Because my thing was always to be in the background. I didn't like the thought of actually being on the show because you're going to be seen and recognized and all the rest of it. But it's open up doors. I mean, now I've got a show on TV, which is a weekly political show.

19:09I would never have got that had I not done The Apprentice. I think it's done wonders. I'm so glad I did it. And I think for anyone in the audience who might be thinking of going on that show or any show, please do. Please do. Even Love Island? Huh? Even Love Island? Even Love Island? I mean, come on. Some of the entrepreneurs that have come out of Love Island, because we are in the world where you need attention and there's so much noise out there. How are you going to get attention? You know, we were just speaking about personal brand. If you're a business, you are a personal brand. A lot of people are going to be doing business with people they feel they know.

19:41So whatever you can do to elevate yourself, hell yeah. I think it's been absolute wonders. But like I say, because I did well on the show, I don't know how it would have been if I'd come out week one or week two and I'd done something that made me look incompetent. I guess it would have the opposite amplification. But to have gone this far, and again, to active integrity and certainty and, you know, being authentic to who you are, it's just opened so many doors. Because it's the BBC. You've got, what, seven, eight million people watching you. Anywhere in the world, everyone knows of The Apprentice.

20:10And you've got Donald Trump, which is probably the most famous name attached to The Apprentice. And no one in the world doesn't know what the show The Apprentice is. It's opened up doors. It's been amazing. What about you, Sabrina? Helped or hindered? Massively helped. um going on to the apprentice i didn't know how powerful a personal brand was and when i spoke earlier and i lost my business i co-founded a tech company i used my name because the bbc and the uk press knew who i was and i had a company to show the impact of this when we launched we went to every single press outlet in the uk the sun the metro the times the telegraph and we had 130 ,000 users on our website overnight and 350 ,000 users within six weeks of launching.

21:00Now the growth of that is faster than Facebook and I purely put it down to the fact that UK knew who I was, they trusted me and I had a business that solved a problem. So for me, now is the most important time to build your personal brand and whether that's on TV, on YouTube, on the radio, on your LinkedIn, whatever that is, it's your opportunity to share from a place of values what your lessons that you've learned, but not from ego. And people can quickly see that on their intensity. So providing you're coming from the right place, I think it's the biggest hack that anyone can do for their career and for their business.

21:40Help or hinder? I need one hinder. Come on. Mine's definitely hinder. Apologies. Oh, brilliant. I thank you. Wow. I want to hear this. Worst question ever. I'm not building a personal brand. I'm building a brand which is now a multinational global brand. And if we look, I think Trey commented on this earlier. If you look at the process of The Apprentice, when you're in it, it's a bit like being in prison. You've got three months when you're in the house. You've got no phone, no communication with the outside world. It's very, very hard to run your business. And when you come out of it, you're so busy with press and all the other shows that come after it and newspapers and events.

22:11And it takes a big, big chunk out of your life. And if I look at the trajectory that Revival has been on, that's six months that's taken away from it. And I would be six months further had I not gone on to it. And if I go into a room now with a VC or a PE or, you know, someone who's got a fund, you know, multi-million pounds, you know, agreement with us, they don't care the fact that I've been on The Apprentice. They care about the EBITDA, the company, the growth rate. What's the trajectory? What's, you know, what's the net margin? What's the gross margin? It might open a door. It might raise a smile.

22:40It might raise an eyebrow. right but ultimately no one's doing a deal with me because i was on the apprentice no one's appraising my business because i was on the apprentice it's on the value of the business and i find at certain levels you know if i take this back two three years ago maybe even four years ago at that level the apprentice was interesting to people who had you know a ticket size of maybe a hundred thousand or two hundred fifty thousand when you elevate it i don't think people really care in that sense and and if anything we don't you wouldn't find the word apprentice referenced on any of our kind of media or any of our flyers or any of our products we actually try to disguise it and area yeah very much so and thirdly if i'm in a um corporate meeting you know with vc or with a private equity fund it's not something i'm going to actively bring up yeah but can i say i think daniel is one of the most successful entrepreneurs who have come out of the apprentice so i'd love you to actually share what your brand's doing now so i own a drinks company um the company's called revival i went on there with that company it was much smaller back then but we've grown significantly since then i haven't you know leveraged the apprentice to do that it's been built off of an organic intrinsic value in the brand which is snowballed and escalated over time and you know now we're in a position where we trade all over the world we've got a european head office which we're hopefully opening in a couple of months we're hopefully opening a head office in the middle east in dubai in early next year as well so yeah i think things are going well and this is the other thing this is going to be my final question, actually, because in certain instances like that, you would have given away 50 % equity for 250 grand, which when you're looking, when you sort of like, don't understand business, you're like, oh my God, you get 250 grand.

24:15That's amazing. But actually, as an equity deal, that is the worst possible thing that you could have, that you're probably not giving a percentage of your company away for 250 these days. No, it's terrible. And even after the deal, I was then chasing money in that respect and talking similar ticket sizes to that and because it's a bit like the dragon's den thing right they offer 30 grand for 30 percent of someone's business it's wild if you look at it yeah and i think the more you learn about business and i think it obviously helps the bigger your company is it puts you in the driving seats of these negotiations but to your point about the deal with sugar it's a terrible deal i'm so glad touch wood that i didn't take it because it was a massive undervaluation at the time and today you know it would be good for him his 250 would be worth a hell of a lot more but it would put me in a position where I wouldn't want to be and I think ultimately that would hinder my ability to grow the company and run it how I want to so no blessing in disguise I didn't win it yeah absolutely what finally then what are you guys doing in in business now tell us about sort of what's come off the back of the apprentice for you Sabrina and what are you working on right now before I was a tennis coach and I was a tournament organizer and we had a good team we had 42 team members I then co-founded shopping slot which had around 350 ,000 users which was the solution for people getting food during lockdown and I started an agency five years ago from my local coffee shop not really knowing what to do now since then we've done millions of dollars I've been able to travel around the world and live in the most incredible places and now I'm trying to help specifically a lot more females to start their own businesses and having gone through I think the ups and downs is the biggest thing but also being the apprentice people know the name they trust the name there's a certain amount of credibility there so the amount of impact that I can do and the fact that I've built a company means that I can hopefully help and impact some others to accelerate what they're trying to do and today actually at 2.15 I have a talk on the tech and AI stage around how to build your personal brand around AI so for anyone who's like oh that sounds interesting or i you know i think i want to build my personal brand as a founder please come and join in and we've got a really cool presentation where hopefully you'll actually be able to impact and create something for yourself off the back that's why she's the queen of pr subconsciously upsold her next thing to you brilliant i love it nobody missed that trey finally didn't come to you what are you working on really really tv show things yeah i I mean, my thing, that's why I say in terms of personal brand, my thing I want to do is elevate my personal brand because there's lots of stuff that I do want to do with it.

26:53So I'm doing things in TV. Like I say, we've got a political show weekly. I've got another huge announcement that I can't say yet, which is in the world of politics as well. But also I run a club called Sobo Club, which is an events and training company for people like yourself, really and truly. It's about networking more than anything else because one thing I'm really clear about, and I think you guys probably could agree, a lot of what you're going to be doing is about who you know. You know, if you want to get somewhere fast or you want to raise a certain amount of capital, it's going to be who you know.

27:24It's going to be proximity. So we do that. We do some incredible events with some incredible brands. We've done ones with Gucci. We've done events with Barry. We have some just really inspirational evenings, et cetera. And then we do a lot of trainings. I've actually got one now that I'm missing, which is a speaker's training, which trains you to do exactly what we're doing here now because you know anyone that's scared of public speaking please learn how to do it because there's going to be no better way to convey your message not someone else's your message than learning to be on these stages disseminating what's really important to you and then as another thing that i do very very passionate about property so i've got a it's literally an eight-figure property project with my family where we're looking to sort of diversify into west africa where i'm from I'm a Nigerian.

28:11So yeah, lots of great, great, exciting stuff going on. If this conversation resonated with you, don't just sit there, act on it. Make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations. And remember, the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.