The main reasons given for this by respondents were a general dislike of the prickly entrepreneur and a feeling that they’d earn more working for themselves.
The accounting software company www.KashFlow.co.uk polled over 2,500 business owners across the UK to find out whether they would ever consider working for Lord Alan Sugar, star of the hit BBC show ‘The Apprentice’, for a salary of £100k a year.
78% of the people that took part said they would not work for Lord Sugar for £100k a year and, when asked to stipulate their reasons why, 54% said they preferred the lifestyle, freedom and independence of being their own boss, whilst 23% cited a general dislike for him.
11% thought they could earn more money working for themselves, whilst 9% admitted they ‘couldn’t handle the pressure’ of working for Lord Alan Sugar.
KashFlow further questioned the 22% of business owners that claimed they would like to work for the business tycoon, again to find out their reasons for this. 47% said they’d use the experience to ‘learn from him’, whilst 31% would do so ‘for the challenge’. 4% said the salary of £100k was the main selling point for them.
When breaking down the research results further, KashFlow found that the percentage of people that would not like to work for Lord Alan Sugar did not drop for those currently earning less than that amount, or even when looking at those earning less than £40k per year.
Of those that would accept a job with Lord Alan Sugar for £100k a year, 8% said it would be on the condition that they wouldn’t have to appear on TV.
Duane Jackson, founder of KashFlow, commented on the findings of the poll; “With the recent series of The Apprentice well underway, we thought it would be interesting to ask business owners whether or not they’d consider working for Lord Sugar, if it meant they could have a salary of £100k. We half expected those that currently earned significantly less than £100k to say that they would work for him for that amount, but rather surprisingly this really wasn’t the case.
“Respondents seemed more focused on the pressure of working for him, or just the fact that they enjoyed the freedom and potential of working for themselves. Even those that said they would work for him had certain ‘conditions’; some said they could only do it for a year, whilst others were ready to accept his knowledge more than his money.”
He concluded, “The contestants on The Apprentice are, typically, ‘self proclaimed entrepreneurs’, who are obviously quite keen to blow their own trumpet. In my opinion real entrepreneurs shouldn’t introduce themselves as such and, therefore, we were keen to see what a sample of business people thought about the show and, more importantly, Lord Sugar.”
