Apprentice stars: What Lord Sugar taught us

In this special instalment of our weekly video series, My Business Leader Secret, we talk to former contestants of the TV show The Apprentice to discover the lessons they learned from Lord Sugar.

The Apprentice is one of the most successful and long-running TV shows in the UK to celebrate entrepreneurship. The series has been fronted by Lord Sugar since the beginning – and he has just signed up to do another three. Season 19 is coming to a climax on the BBC on Thursday (April 17).

Lord Sugar puts money into the winner's business, investing £250,000 in exchange for half of their company.

Flex and the City, a digital platform for the office industry, hosted an event with four former contestants recently at the Old Sessions House in London. It was a chance to find out what the apprentices learned from their time with Lord Sugar and what they are up to now.

Marnie Swindells

Marnie Swindells won The Apprentice in 2023. She is the owner and director of Bronx Boxing gyms, which has 25 employees. The main rule in business that she learned from Lord Sugar is to trust your instinct, she says.

"There are no rules in business or pathways to follow, so you have to rely on your own intuition," she adds. "Not only did he teach me that directly, I got a sense that's how he became who he is in business as well."

She says she also agrees with Lord Sugar that there should be a return to office work, as opposed to working from home.

“Culture is everything, from the leadership to the people. In my case [running a gym], the coaches and the members, how it feels, the energy and the atmosphere is the business. You only truly achieve that when you are in person, making eye contact, seeing and feeling their energy, and sharing in that.”

Solomon Ohlman-Akhtar

Solomon Ohlman-Akhtar was a contestant in series 10 in 2014. He is a business director at The Socialbear Group, which uses digital technology to manage social media communities.

"On the show you have to have resilience because there is no margin for error," he says. "I learned that resilience in business is one of the most important things, every time you get knocked down to get back up."

The thing that most excites him today is the possibilities thrown up by artificial intelligence.

“AI is really changing the game for young people. You can replace the marketing team with AI. AI is this huge wave and young people getting into that today are going to be the next millionaires.”

Raj Chohan

Raj Chohan was a contestant in series 18 last year. She is the director at Golden Key Financial Services.

"The thing I learned from Lord Sugar is to do business for fun and do property to make money," says Chohan. "Now I do both. I'm a mortgage broker and a property developer and very soon to be a bridging lender."

However, she believes it's hard for self-employed entrepreneurs to achieve the dream of owning their own home and this needs to change.

"When entrepreneurs first come into it, it's so hard, first of all, to make the money. Then if you're self-employed and you're trying to get on the property ladder, you are three years behind because you’ve got two years of accounts to produce. There's so many things that need to be changed.”

Reece Donnelly

Reece Donnelly is a veteran of series 17. He is also the managing director of Theatre School of Scotland, a performing arts and drama school for children and young adults.

"Lord Sugar taught me to back myself 110 per cent," says Donnelly.

The reason you should have that confidence, Donnelly says, is that "you know your business more than anyone else, so you need to go in there and show that passion you have [for it]."