Get your popcorn ready, The Apprentice final is on next Sunday night and it looks set to be a spectacular showdown.

Series 13 of the show where entrepreneurs battle it out to become Lord Sugar’s protege has not failed to deliver in terms of entertainment, with some punishing challenges and tasks.

There have been the usual tears and tantrums, and of course, epic dressing downs in the boardroom. But what can you learn from this series, other than Alan Sugar needs to hire a joke writer?

We take a look at the wisdom event planners can garner from this year’s Apprentice, with seven lessons from series 13.

Challenge – Burgers
Lesson – Picking the right time and place for your event is essential

Making and selling burgers to hungry Londoners was the first task set to the contestants on episode one – how hard can that be? Evidently pretty tricky – if you spend so long trying to decide what to make you miss the lunchtime trade, like the boys’ team did. “Team Vitality” ended up in a deserted Brixton market trying to flog buffalo burgers by shouting sales messages in an echo chamber. After two hours they had sold the grand total of three burgers. Another lesson we can learn from this episode is get your food labelling right. The boys promoted their turkey burgers as organic, disregarding the fact that the breadcrumbs they were coated in were not organically produced. Luckily they didn’t end up in hot water with Trading Standards, but project manager Danny Grant did find himself fired. Fail.

Challenge – Hotel Redesign
Lesson – Designing should be left to designers

The candidates were challenged to redecorate a hotel room. The task was to make the lodging more luxurious so the hoteliers could charge a premium. The boys opted for a London theme, while the girls chose golf. The results of both were truly terrible. However, Team Vitality once again took the cup for bad decisions. Project manager Ross Fretton asked the designer to scrap the Tower Bridge wall graphic she’d been working on for two hours and instead replace it with a 90-second free-form illustration that looked like the scribblings of a toddler. Meanwhile, Sajan Shah (who owns an event company) created a mood board that Lord Sugar summed up as “diabolical.”

Challenge – Robots
Lesson – Clear branding is a must

Tasked with selling robots, Team Vitality (now mixed sex) opted for a yoga robot for the over 60s (which could also remind oldies to take their meds). Asides from being deemed ageist, the robot suffered a major branding malfunction after its name was changed from Jeffrii to SiiMON. No one bothered to inform the programmers so the original moniker remained buried in the software. Consequently, a disastrous presentation followed where the team struggled to explain to buyers why the prototype and the future iteration of the bot had two different names. On top of this was the embarrassment of presenting a (thankfully unreadable) half-arsed, typo-laden promotional billboard.

Challenge – Stadium Sales
Lesson – Keeping an eye on profit margins is important

The candidates went to Wembley for a corporate hospitality task at the Women’s FA Cup final. This one should have been a cinch for wedding planner Siobhan Smith, project manager for Team Graphene, but she spent more time arguing with team mates than nailing down costs. She sent sub-team leader Elizabeth McKenna into the client meeting without any costings. Wine was over-ordered and the team’s profit margins got hammered, ending in Siobhan being fired. At the other end of the extreme, Andrew Brady narrowly missed out on red card for his shameless cost-cutting. He served bowls of cheesy Wotsits instead of canapés and champagne flutes full of tap water.

Challenge – Bruges Tour
Lesson – Deliver what you say you will (or be prepared to give refunds)

Organising a bespoke tour of Bruges, Belgium was the task set in episode six. Team Graphene, led by scary florist Elizabeth McKenna, decided to promote a Segway tour, offering guests the chance to see the historic city from the comfort of an electric scooter. The description however, wasn’t entirely accurate; it was in fact a 90-minute walking tour, with a token 10 minutes on a Segway at the end. As a result, they had to issue £156 worth of refunds. Amazingly Team Graphene still won the task, but only because tour guides for Team Vitality, Anisa Topan and Charles Burns, had literally no idea where they were going or what they were looking at.

Challenge – Doggy Business
Lesson – Inconsistent pricing will upset customers

Tasked with providing dog-related services, Team Graphene was allocated with organising doggie agility classes. They worked hard on sales and brought in customers, however an interesting charging policy got dog owners hot under the collar. While the subteam charged £25 for the classes, project manager James White decided to push the price up to make more profit. Unfortunately, the customers talked to each other and weren’t happy to be charged more for the same service. Elizabeth McKenna smoothed the ruffled fur by offering refunds, saving the team from failure (and a shock triple firing) by the skin of its teeth.

Challenge – Fashion Show
Lesson – Bullsh*tting to save face will bite you on the bum

The final task of the series saw the candidates putting on a fashion show. Each team represented a designer and had to sell as much clothing as possible to the retailers who were present. Jade English headed up Team Vitality, promoting award-winning womenswear designer Helen Woollams. With a background in PR and marketing, you’d expect her to take the time to get to know the brand she was representing but Jade failed to familiarise herself with the designer’s brand name “Hellavagirl”. Pitching her work to a fashion magazine, she told the bemused editors, again and again, that she was representing a brand called Helen Woollams. Despite indicating that she might have made a mistake, Jade stuck to her version of the story to save face. She even decorated the fashion show with silver helium balloons spelling out “Helen Woollams”, much to the designer’s surprise. Jade’s attempt to save herself from embarrassment ultimately ended in her firing and exclusion from the final five. Sometimes it’s just better to ‘fess up.

Conclusion

Who knew the frequently inept bumblings of The Apprentice contestants could teach us so much? While the against-the-clock challenges they must face don’t really represent business in real life, event organisers do find themselves in high pressure situations. Learn from their mistakes to keep yourself out of the firing line!