I want to start by thanking all of my supporters and fans of "The Apprentice" and most importantly, the users of Zoodango. It's been a wonderful experience over the past 14 weeks. Last night was the final episode of "The Apprentice," and in a way, I'm very happy that everything's come to a close. The live finale was fun and entertaining, and it was great to see all my fellow candidates whom I haven’t seen since the taping 9 months ago.
For those of you who didn’t see the finale or follow the season, I’ll make the long story short. “The Apprentice” is a reality television show about Type-A business personalities competing on business related projects week in and week out. Each week, there is a winning team and a losing team, and Donald Trump fires a person from the losing team. The goal is to win projects, not get fired, and display as much leadership as possible.
This season, the final four consisted of me, Frank, Nicole, and Stefani. All the candidates displayed great moments during the show, and they all deserved to be at the final table. Going into the finale, I thought I had a fair shot at winning the reality tv competition. After all, I was the only finalist with both an overall winning record (7-5) and winning project management record (2-1). I stepped up 3 times as project manager, which was more than all the final four combined. Frank and Nicole both had an overall losing record of 5-7 and losing project manager record of 0-1. Stefani had the same overall winning record of 7-5 as me, but she never took on the role as project manager. In addition, there were 3 sets of executives from the sponsoring companies that specifically mentioned my strong leadership.
As I thought about my odds of winning, I was sure that Donald Trump would be the type of executive that would look at the bottom line when awarding the victor of the show. I was also sure that Donald Trump would only award the crown to someone who took risk and displayed leadership since he always preached “taking risk” and “stepping up”. I also took into consideration the precedence of how he has made previous decisions. In every season of “The Apprentice”, the previous winners have had a winning project management record……five seasons in a row. So when you look at the data, you can understand I wasn’t being overconfident……I was just looking at my odds based on the objective data.
Some of my contacts warned me that Donald Trump may not make his decisions on objective facts, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. The media portrays him as an erratic and emotional character, but I found him to be a quite sensible and rational business executive. At the same time, I understood that “The Apprentice” was a television game show first with a business concept second. As a fellow CEO (obviously Zoodango is not as big as Trump International), I wanted to believe that Donald Trump would look at the overall facts, essentially the annual report, and make his decision. So based on the facts, my chances looked pretty good…….believe it or not, you could have placed a bet on me in Vegas…..the Vegas odds-makers gave me the best odds at winning the competition. On the NBC website, the viewer polls had me leading up until 15 minutes of the finale. So the question then lies, what happened?
In all of my press interviews this morning, they asked me why Donald Trump didn't hire me. They all asked me about what Donald Trump meant by saying "I didn't like some of the dialogue……you know what I mean." I've received over 300 emails about this confusion as well. People are asking me if I had a disagreement with Donald Trump or if I said something wrong during the commercial breaks. People are asking me if Donald Trump was displeased with something I said during the season.
Well, let’s analyze this a bit further. First, his second statement about “you know what I mean” signifies that the dialogue must have been a 2-way communication between him and I or a reference to a conversation about something I may have said. It also signifies that the dialogue must have been offensive enough to warrant an expectation that both parties would recall this so called dialogue. So, I went through my 150 pages of journaling. I kept a journal every single day during the taping of the show. As I read through the journal, there were only two negative comments to me by Donald Trump. In the Smart Mouth task, he told me that I did a bad job, but that I was a good leader in previous tasks. Another reference was on the Las Vegas Towers task, he told me that he didn’t like one of the stock photos that we chose on the brochure and he didn’t like the color of the gold shade on the Trump Towers. These were the only references to direct negative statement from Donald Trump to me during the entire season. On the other hand, I can give you at least 23 references when he gave me praise. Even during the GNC boardroom, when Bill Rancic accused me of covering my butt, Donald Trump stood up for me and said, “James did nothing wrong…..in fact, maybe Surya should have listened to him.” Even when I took negative heat in the boardroom, Donald Trump stood up for me and did not fire me.
So, this throws out the theory that this mysterious dialogue occurred during the actual taping of the season (task or boardroom). Next, we have to look at the negative statements that I may have said during my personal interviews. I did say some negative things about some of my competitors in my personal interviews. But the reality is that everyone made these kinds of statements. The producers ask you all kinds of “funny” questions that lead you into saying something comical or sarcastic about your competitors……the purpose of this is to make entertaining television. Remember, this is a reality television show. So, then you have to ask yourself….did everyone say negative things or was it just me. So, I went back to the tapes of everyone on the final four, and what I found interesting was that all of us said negative things about others. So, this throws out the assumption that this mysterious dialogue happened during our personal interviews. It also doesn’t make sense that this dialogue would have originated from the personal interviews because Donald Trump never spoke with me about any of these interviews. So, there’s really no way for his comment about “you know what I mean” to make sense.
Through the process of elimination, we can conclude that the “mysterious dialogue” did not happen during actual projects, boardroom, or personal interviews. So this leaves us with the live finale. Did I say something during the live finale or during commercial time that could have offended Donald Trump? First, I will tell you that I said absolutely nothing to Donald Trump during the commercials. He said a few words to us, but he was busy getting ready for the next take. As of right now, I don’t know what the heck Donald Trump was referring to with this “mysterious dialogue.” He looked at me and said “you know what I mean” which confused me even more. I was completely dumbfounded.
However, I can speculate one thing. During the finale, I did mention in my personal tape that I quit a six-figure job to start my own company and focused on my conviction of why I wanted to be my own boss. I also mentioned how much I enjoy my time with family. Next, I committed the big “slap on the hand” by answering Don Jr.’s question that I am the current founder and CEO of Zoodango.com. In the real world, this statement would be 100% okay. But on television, especially on Donald Trump’s show where companies pay millions of dollars for product endorsements…..any reference to a company is treated as an endorsement for promoting the company. To be 100% honest with you, I did not intentionally bring up the name Zoodango.com…..it just happened. Zoodango.com is literally a part of who I am now. I eat, sleep, drink, and wake up to Zoodango.com. It’s just part of my every day speech. In retrospect, many people would probably have advised me to use the live audience of 8 million viewers to promote my company, but I wasn’t thinking this way. If this were indeed my pure intention, I would have given the whole CEO elevator pitch. When Don Jr. asked me the strategic thinking or big picture question, I gave him an example by pointing to Zoodango.com. After seeing that I love being an entrepreneur, and I love hanging with my wife and kids, and I love Zoodango……maybe Trump didn’t see how I had any more room to love him. After all, he did tell Nicole that he wanted to be loved more than Tim. Well, I can only speculate, but I have no choice but to speculate since I wasn’t given a clear and compelling answer from Mr. Trump.
Now I know the following question will be asked. If I could do the whole finale all over again, would I have created the same video footage of my family, the speech about being an entrepreneur, and promoting Zoodango.com. Here’s my answer. YES! I have no choice. Here’s what I mean by saying that I have no choice. I am who I am. I am a proud family man. I love being an entrepreneur. And I love Zoodango.com. During the finale, I made a subconscious decision to choose my life today over the life that Trump’s new job could offer. Not that Trump’s deal isn’t great…….it’s a phenomenal opportunity to work with Donald Trump making $250K. It just wasn't for me this time around.
Like I said, I don’t take credit for this decision at all……..it was my subconscious choice. Our subconscious makes all kinds of decisions…..we just have to recognize when it happens. It’s very self-revealing and empowering because it tells you what’s important in your life. Did I have to go on “The Apprentice” and make it to the finale to realize my subconscious priorities? No……but in this case, it all worked out.
I’ll tell you the simplest reason why I went on this show. I thought it would be fun/adventurous and a great opportunity to learn from a billionairre. . I love adventure. I’ve got a philosophy that I live by: “My philosophy is to live a life of short street corners. Every turn could yield a new surprise. It could be good, bad, or great but at least it keeps us excited and on our toes. Life is no fun on a long, straight highway knowing exactly where we're going to end up." This is why I went on the show. In my adventure, I also found competition. I am a very, very competitive person. Ask my buddies who have played basketball with me. In my pursuit on “The Apprentice,” I got closer and closer to winning…….and finally, I just wanted to win so bad especially for the sake of competing. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. Some people say that your motive should be 100% to work for Donald Trump forever. Well, this is crazy. Why would you have to go through a reality television show to work for Donald Trump. Send in a resume and application the conventional way. He’s got great people who will call and interview you. People go on “The Apprentice” for all kinds of reasons…..but mine happened to be to gain some Trump insight and create adventure with a cause. I’m sure you now understand the adventure part. Now, here’s the “cause” part. The cause part was to show my two little girls that they could achieve anything in life. If daddy - a minority Asian American – can get on prime time television, then they can certainly do anything in this world. I hope and pray that my two girls will have no boundaries or glass ceilings in their pursuit of their dreams. I was so proud to see them on television during the finale. That moment was certainly the best moment during my whole stint on “The Apprentice”…..yes, even better than rapping with Snoop Dogg.
All in all, this was a great experience. I still wish I had won because I’m just a competitive guy, but I believe Stefani has the right industry background. I won’t concede that she outperformed me from a game perspective because I did have the numbers in my favor and I did show more leadership and creativity, but I believe Stefani has a great legal and real estate background….perfect for Trump’s world and she's a great person! I live in a world of the Web 2.0 and social networking and the internet……not quite the world of Donald Trump. I only wish I could have gotten a more clear and definitive reason why I lost this game, but that’s the game of life…..some things are meant to be in the grey.
Thanks all for reading this insanely long post. Signing off…..thanks for the season! Oh by the way, did the Zoodango.com comment actually help……….well, let me put it this way, our servers went down with an overnight increase of 900% in our traffic. Don't worry, our servers are back up and ready. We just didn't see this coming.
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Well, that just adds more mystery to why you weren't hired - the final decision apparently had nothing to do with the episodes preceding it...that sucks - it's okay though, when Zoodango becomes bigger than the tallest Trump tower, it'll all be right in the end ;)