VENT: Lord Sugar - Easy to start a business

Red_Panda_2

goater78 wrote: »

You can dispute his claims all you like but was this not how he started out? I admit the show is dumbed down TV e.g. "If the sky's the limit then why are there footprints on the moon". I think the girls made a profit of about £400 you do that 5 days a week that is over £100K a year. I believe you can easily cover the above mentioned costs and walk away with a respectable profit.

But there were 8 people working to make that amount of money, even if £100k a year was after all the expenses they would only make £12500 each for the year!

paddyrg

Red_Panda wrote: »

But there were 8 people working to make that amount of money, even if £100k a year was after all the expenses they would only make £12500 each for the year!

(Before tax!)

Lest we forget, AS made the bulk of his money by owning property at a time when every TD&H was going "ooooohhh look now my house is worth 10x what I paid for it, isn't free money great?". Money from hard assets, not from skillful wheeler-dealing and particular business prowess. Amstrad never made anything decent that I can remember - CP/M (not PC/DOS-based) word processors using 3" (not the standard 3.5") discs. Hi-fis from the same production lines that made Matsui. Those comedy emailer phones. He even managed to kill off the Sinclair Computing brand. Oh, and he bought Viglen, who at their peak were very forgettable PC's. He bought a footy club, sank millions into it, and then did a bunch of deals to take football away from free-to-air TV (even admitting to grassing up ITV's bid to Sky so they could win the rights), quickly trousering the profit and walking away... What *does* he make now? Apart from self-promotional TV shows, that is?

moneyuser

goater78 wrote: »

You can dispute his claims all you like but was this not how he started out?

I believe from what I've heard he did start out that way. From what I recall though he was a wheeler dealer on the street corner.

goater78 wrote: »

I think the girls made a profit of about £400 you do that 5 days a week that is over £100K a year. I believe you can easily cover the above mentioned costs and walk away with a respectable profit.

Will have to disagree with you on that point.

bigpound

It's reality TV, it's not supposed to be 100% factual. It is all exaggerated and edited together in a way to make it more interesting.

Think Dragon's Den.

fluffnutter

I don't watch it. Britain's obsession with entrepreneurialism or nothing depresses me. We won't celebrate our intellectuals, yet we're more than happy to laud someone who makes hoovers in his shed. Both are achievements of course, but we're totally swayed in support of the latter. It's fairly obvious why: the latter makes money (possibly), the former rarely does.

System

Red_Panda wrote: »

But there were 8 people working to make that amount of money, even if £100k a year was after all the expenses they would only make £12500 each for the year!

If you watched the program it was pretty obvious that you don't need 8 people to make the £100k. 3/4 of them are useless and just stand there. If I remember most of the money was made by selling the fruit salads. That would be relatively easy to replicate without having 8 members of staff. I see lots of similar operations in Manchester and they wouldn't exist if you couldn't make money out of it! Frankly I believe if you are prepared to work hard then you can easily set up your own business and make some money. There seems to be a gist on here that theres not much point even trying as its just too hard! Frankly I have nothing but respect for people who are prepared to try and make money through their own hard work!

System

paddyrg wrote: »

(Before tax!)

Lest we forget, AS made the bulk of his money by owning property at a time when every TD&H was going "ooooohhh look now my house is worth 10x what I paid for it, isn't free money great?". Money from hard assets, not from skillful wheeler-dealing and particular business prowess. Amstrad never made anything decent that I can remember - CP/M (not PC/DOS-based) word processors using 3" (not the standard 3.5") discs. Hi-fis from the same production lines that made Matsui. Those comedy emailer phones. He even managed to kill off the Sinclair Computing brand. Oh, and he bought Viglen, who at their peak were very forgettable PC's. He bought a footy club, sank millions into it, and then did a bunch of deals to take football away from free-to-air TV (even admitting to grassing up ITV's bid to Sky so they could win the rights), quickly trousering the profit and walking away... What *does* he make now? Apart from self-promotional TV shows, that is?

As usual on this site people just appear to be jealous of other people's successes. I don't like Sir Alan but you can't help but respect the fact the man went from a council estate to being worth in excess of £500 million. That is very impressive. If it was as easy as you try and explain above then everyone would have done it!

Laz123

The Barrow Boy Made Good cheated and lied when building up his own business. He told his Amstrad shareholders to sell him their shares as they were vertually worthless when another business venture eventually saw them soaring.


His foray into being Business Tsar made him look a complete idiot when his advice to struggling small businesses was they were doomed anyway.

His opening line on the Apprentice should say, 'I'm probably the biggest r sole you're ever likely to meet'.

DebtHater

To be honest, I think Lord Sugar is probably his own biggest fan. He bangs on about having all the skills and the knowledge, but I dont really see a lot of evidence of that? The biggest company he owns is Amstrad, but they arent exactly the best in their market.

Credit where its due, he has achieved a lot in his life but he seems to think he has done enough to then go on and make TV shows where he blows his own trumpet every chance he gets.

When the Apprentice first came about, I thought that Sugar could have been seen to be an inspiration. But every TV series that goes by, the more people are seeing him for what he really is. A fairly succesful business man who is trying to get more than his 15 minutes worth of fame.

But from an entertainment point of view, I do enjoy watching the show. But the contestants? Some of the most irritating people I have ever seen.

biggaz26

The point everyone seems to be missing is that it is easy to START a business....what is hard is to make it successful.

If you dont live in one of the major cities in the UK (London, Manchester, Birmingham size) doing something like we saw with the juices and fruit salads wouldnt work as you would get anywhere near enough people coming through.

Anyone with a good idea and a bit of determination can set up a business.....most will unfortunately fail!

G