The Apprentice star’s company boasts £200,000 earnings despite Lord Sugar’s ‘history-making’ firing

The Apprentice star Frederick Afrifa has spoken of his ‘frustration’ after Lord Alan Sugar made history by the way he fired him.

In a first for the BBC One business competition, Lord Sugar made a decision before the episode had ended, and sent Frederick home before then firing another candidate.

Project manager Frederick had failed to take his team to victory this week in a task involving creating gamified banking apps for children.

And though he was ready to defend himself until the end, he was barely given a chance, with Lord Sugar declaring Frederick’s fate before he could bring back two teammates into the boardroom.

Lord Sugar had seethed: ‘It seems like a completely disjointed organisation you were running, so my gut feeling that you’ve got a lot to answer, Frederick.

‘I don’t like wasting my time, I think you lead a bad team and I think the dynamics of the team is terrible at the moment, you missed an opportunity of £1.1million, you got no orders at all.

‘So with regret Frederick, you’re fired.’

Former athlete and motivational speaker Frederick has now spoken of the unexpected firing, telling Metro: ‘I definitely think it’s an Apprentice first, so at least I can say I’m making history.

‘It was really strange, because he asked me who I wanted to bring back and I said I wanted to bring those two back, and then a couple of minutes later, I was gone.’

Frederick joked that he could attribute his exit to ‘Spurs playing that night, so Lord Sugar wanted to get to the stadium as soon as possible’.

He then added: ‘It was a little bit frustrating because it would have ben great to be in the bottom three and spend a bit more time defending yourself.’

Frederick admitted he had faced mistakes along the way, but used those to learn from and felt as though he would have had time to explain his side of things and help Lord Sugar understand his thought process during the task.

Nonetheless, he didn’t see any particular moment as his ‘downfall’ and left the boardroom with ‘no regrets’, adding: ‘Maybe I’ve made a mistake here and there, but if you want someone who’s going to continuously keep trying, keep learning, then that’s me. So yeah, I definitely felt like I was myself throughout the process, so no regrets.’

Despite leaving the competition without Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment, Frederick still has big plans to keep growing his business, having already turned over £200,000 last year.

His company, Believe In Greatness, has helped over 10,000 professionals and entrepreneurs increase their confidence while speaking under pressure.

He told us: ‘I used to be a professional athlete, and growing up in Milan in Italy and then moving to Brixton when I was 11 years old, I was quite shy as a kid. I had a bit of social anxiety and didn’t really speak much.

‘Fortunately I had a career in professional athletics so all I had to do was run fast and not speak to anyone for a job.

‘Then during Covid, things got challenging and I got dropped by a sponsor team who stopped paying me, and I had to get a real job.’

Frederick became a delivery driver, another role where he ‘didn’t have to speak much to many people’, but admitted he didn’t enjoy it.

‘There was one shift when it was snowing, and it’s hard enough walking in the snow let alone driving, and I remember telling myself, if I keep running away from this, I’m just never going to live a life worth living and my life would just be about athletics.

‘So I embarked on this journey of self-development to work on my ability to speak, and I would speak in schools for free just to get better at speaking and inspire the children, and it’s not until the school said to me they’ve got a budget to pay me that I thought it was pretty cool,’ he went on.

‘When I got good at speaking and found all these opportunities open up, I really wanted to help the former version of myself.’

Three years ago, his business was helping a few individuals ‘here and there’, but now, he’s working with corporations like Shell Energy, training the senior leaders of King’s College University, and even the government of the British Virgin Islands.

‘It has grown quite a bit, but we’re still early on in our journey,’ Frederick said.

He added that they’d ‘be ok’ with or without Lord Sugar’s investment, which would have been used for marketing and networking.

Reflecting on the ‘crazy experience’ of The Apprentice as a whole, Frederick revealed it was ‘even wilder’ than what we see on TV, saying: ‘Overall, it was just a really cool experience, I’m a big fan of the show so being on it was incredible.’

When asked about where he goes from here and where he would see himself in five years, he said: ‘I would like to be one of the most sought after keynote speakers in the world, helping people understand how the digital world has affected the way we speak and communicate.

‘As an organization, we want to help millions of people around the world to get really good at speaking and communicating, and then also on a personal level, just to be happy and to be content and to understand that business is cool, but I also want to have a family and just be happy with my private life.’

He can also see himself returning to TV in the future, but insisted it wouldn’t be as a candidate or contestant on any show, perhaps a presenter instead.

‘I’ll focus on my business and if those opportunities come then I’ll definitely follow them.’

The Apprentice continues on Thursdays at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.

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