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    The Great Gordino Newsletter - Issue 294 - Wed 23rd Feb 2005
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    Hi There,

    I hope your week is going well.

    A good programme is on tonight.

    Recently I talked about Donald Trump's show The Apprentice,
    where various applicants were whittled down week by week to
    leave the winner, who would work for Trump for big bucks.
    It was hugely successful, and subsequent series are being
    hammered out double quick in the US, some of them not even
    featuring Trump.
    I suspect that this was all part of a shrewdly negotiated contract
    on his part.

    Anyhoo, due to its' success over here, it was only a matter of
    time before the UK version came, and it started last week.

    I would have thought the obvious candidate would be Sir Richard
    Branson, but I understand he is doing a similar show, but not
    under the 'Apprentice' brand.

    No, this show features Sir Alan Sugar, a former market trader
    who built himself a £700 million fortune by follwing the same
    pattern as Branson, i.e. making products more affordable and
    accessible to the mass market.

    I have bought his products in my time, and I'll come to one in
    particular later.

    As for the show, well it follows the Trump version to the letter,
    which I find a bit irritating.
    I think they could have tweaked it a bit, and even the line up of
    contestants has the same personality types that the US show did.

    It's still enjoyable though, and interesting to watch how different
    minds tackle the same challenge.

    It's on at 9pm tonight, BBC2 for all you UK viewers, and it's
    worth seeing if you get the chance elsewhere!

    Right then, the Alan Sugar product I bought?
    Well his company is called Amstrad - AlanMichaelSugarTrading,
    and way back, ooh, I guess 20 years, I bought an Amstrad HiFi
    system, which had an inbuilt 4-track recorder.
    I thought this would be exciting, as I could record some of the
    songs fermenting in the dank recesses of my mind, and the
    band I mucked about with could record our versions of ACDC and
    Led Zeppelin songs.

    I can still remember, quite clearly, we were in the garage, and
    my mate Alan got his bass guitar, which he had bought from his
    mother's home shopping catalogue, and plugged it into the
    Amstrad recorder.
    I eagerly hit the 'on' button, to be greeted by a loud buzzing,
    which quickly turned into an even louder humming, before
    silence.
    That long, slow silence when you know something has gone
    wrong, and my poor Amstrad never worked from that day on.
    Not that I'm bitter and twisted, but I might just write to Alan
    Sugar one day and tell him.

    So yes, The Apprentice UK is off and running.

    Here's a smooth newsletter link, as I keep my mate Alan in
    mind, he of the cheap bass guitar bought from a catalogue,
    which would bend if you applied even the smallest pressure.
    The bass that is, not the catalogue.
    In fact, the catalogue was probaby more solid than the guitar.

    I sent Alan an email yesterday asking for his opinion of a girl I
    had seen on a dating site.
    Her pictures looked good, she seemed to have a compatible
    personality to mine, in fact the site's 'do we match'
    questionnaire put us as a 79% match, so I shot off an email to
    her.
    Well, one or two actually.
    Maybe three.

    No response, and before I entered the phase which might be
    considered cyber stalking, I thought I'd get Alan's opinion.

    His email back to me was amazing.
    Alan's been happily married for years, but he said she seemed
    to suit *him*, because she liked bungee jumping, travelling,
    surfing, and didn't mind bald men, (Alan has a bald patch
    approximately the size of London).

    I went back and checked her profile, and sure enough, they were
    all there.
    Yes, we had a 79% match, but that's because in things like hair
    colour preferences, she had covered the whole spectrum from
    black through blond to bald as a coot.
    Now if she had said those things in her profile and nothing else,
    I probably wouldn't have considered her, but I had obviously
    paid attention to the things *I* wanted to see, like she
    enjoyed walking the beach in the moonlight, quiet meals in
    small restaurants, rambling with her dog, etc.

    Interesting, eh?
    Was I guilty of ignoring some negatives, becasue I wanted the
    positives so much?
    Probably, and it's an easy mistake to make in life, and in online
    business.
    Some people go into business longing for the good bits, while
    ignoring advice about the negatives.
    It's important to make sure we are seeing the whole picture.

    Ok, that's it for today, and here's the thought - do you pick and
    choose the facts you listen to?

    'Til Friday,
    Health and Happiness,
    Gordon
    email me at gordon@gordonbryan.com - you'll have to copy and paste
    thanks to the idiot online spammers!



    
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