'I was annihilated in The Apprentice interviews but they were right'
Flo Edwards was fired on The Apprentice after the interviews
The Apprentice's Flo Edwards was fired alongside Dr Paul Midha and Tre Lowe during the interviews episode.
Edwards admitted the interviewers were right about her business plan being 'brilliant' and that the numbers were 'ludicrous'. The Apprentice star told Yahoo about how she listened to the feedback when launching her business last year.
It’s the nation’s favourite episode of The Apprentice isn’t it? You don't have a clock, so it feels like it's going on forever.
I appreciate it might look easy sitting at home as a viewer. I coach people and I teach people how to interview and give them interview tips. I was annihilated on TV and I like to think I am relatively good at interviewing.
It was a huge challenge. You haven’t looked at your business plan for 10 weeks and then you are stepping in to be assessed about it. The number one challenge for me was remembering everything. I didn’t have a business at the time, so it’s not as if I can pull on the physical experience of being sat in that situation.
The tasks are set up to assess your business skills and your business acumen. Whereas when it comes to the interviews, they are scrutinising your baby. It’s not a personal attack but it's what you're all about and what you want to do and what you have been doing. It's hard not to get emotional or take it personally and still keep that sort of business oriented mindset when approaching those interviews. I think I was the only candidate not to cry.
I certainly took a lot of learnings from it. You’ve got four incredible business heads and if you don’t listen, I think you’re an absolute moron to be quite frank. I’ve taken everything on board and I put it into practice with everything that I’m doing now.
No, I wouldn’t go back to my recruitment job now that I’ve got my business and we’re moving in the right direction. I launched Hathor Talent last year and I changed the name slightly off the back of the interview. I’m full steam ahead, focusing on it. I listened to the feedback about being over ambitious and throwing too much cattle in right at the beginning. I’m growing my business cautiously and stably. It’s been really positive and life is great.
I’ve had to step up to having that responsibility. People always say it’s really hard but unless you’re doing it yourself, you don’t fully understand how challenging it is. You can never switch off, there’s no off button. It’s been a huge learning curve and we’re getting there. But if you’re not learning then you’re not moving forward.
Obviously I’m gutted I missed out on the final but you have to remember the four other candidates I was up against. They’re incredible, even to be recognised with that group of people is just an honour. You have Tre Lowe, who’s a well known music producer. Dr Paul Midha an award-winning dentist, Phil Turner an award-winning pie-maker, Rachel who has got this amazing fitness studio in the North. Wow, I’m just very grateful.
Ultimately, I was fired for being too ambitious, so I'll absolutely take that. There are worse things to be fired for, and if I’m being fired for being too ambitious then great. I had so much great feedback on the interviews about how great the business plan actually was. All four of the interviewers said my business plan was brilliant and just the numbers are ludicrous. But look I'm a sports person by background so the attitude is go hard or go home, and that's how I went into the process. I wanted to impress.
Mike Soutar and Linda Plant were the toughest interviewers for two very different reasons. When Mike whacked out the piece of paper, I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I don't think there has been a moment as big as that, that I wanted the ground just to collapse underneath my feet and just disappear. There's no coming back for it. There is no defence that you can even try and put it out. You've just got to sit there and take it. But also there is just no winning with Linda. You go back with her, she comes back again. I'm pretty good at holding my own and defending myself but I was never going to win against a lady like that. She's just too formidable.
When I went on The Apprentice, I was surrounded by all these incredible business people and at the time I didn’t have a business. So I had huge imposter syndrome in the first task or two and I knew I had to prove why I was there. Then when the cheesecake negotiation happened, I thought: I deserve to be here. A big learning for me was around confidence and actually learning to back yourself and believe in yourself because if you don’t do it - nobody else is going to. I certainly feel a lot more confident from a business angle. You continue to grow with confidence as you get older.
Going into the show, I've always had a passion for diversity and inclusivity and social mobility in particular. When people talk about diversity, they think of women but actually it's so much broader than that. There’s ethnic minority and also social mobility so learning is really important. On The Apprentice you see so many different people from so many different walks of life, from so many different businesses and skills, all brought together on tasks to to deliver a product. It’s the power of learning from other people. It really brought home to me how important diversity of thought is. To see it in live action was just incredible.
The Apprentice's Flo Edwards told her story to Lily Waddell.
