The Donald Passes on Dot Com Mogul James Sun

If you were watching The Apprentice tonight, there is no doubt that most of us here were starting up the victory train for Dot Com Mogul, James Sun. It seemed almost impossible for James to not beat zero time project manager Stefani. Stefani had flown under the radar the whole season, never stepped up as Project Manager, and really, seemed to work well only as a behind the scenes coordinator, not a leader.

Having Frank and Nicole on the show was pretty much a waste of time. James outshined them all, pun intended, but the entrepreneur within killed him. If you recall, The Donald mentioned that his decision was based on something he said earlier. After I got over the shock of him losing, I thought back, and tried to figure out what was meant by that. Then I clued in…

James Sun is a strong entrepreneur and what entrepreneurs love to do is talk about their own company. During one of his answers, James plugged his web company ZooDango, a sort of MySpace Social Networking site for professionals, while answering a question posed by The Trumps. Since advertisers for TV Shows pay millions of dollars for prime time slots like that, to have James throw a plug out there for his own company, totally undermined the paying advertisers. It’s like having someone do an unpaid plug for BlueFur Webhosting during SuperBowl when GoDaddy paid millions of dollars for their one minute commercial spot.

Since I’m an entrepreneur too, I can’t totally blame James for taking that risk. Heck, I’d totally throw a plug out for Futurelooks if I was given a chance to in front of millions of people. However, everything has an appropriate time and place, and unfortunately for James Sun, an advertiser supported show like The Apprentice, is not a place to do it. With sponsors paying top dollar for spots on that show, I can see why The Donald had to do what he did. The sponsors would have been furious if there were no consequences, but it also forced The Donald to choose the weaker candidate, in my opinion.

I’m sure that James Sun will still be a huge success even without being The Apprentice. Personally, I think that taking a Dot Com guy out of his element and sticking him on a construction site probably wouldn’t have been the best fit anyway, though The Donald would be smart to hire him anyway to take the web side of his business to the next level. Right after the show, I tried to check out his social networking site ZooDango, and it was locked solid with too many visitors. That’s good news for any Dot Com Mogul. That means money is being made!