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A lot of the conflict on those shows is contrived. That show is almost like a procedural drama where the owner's hopeless, resists change, finally sees the lig

A lot of the conflict on those shows is contrived. That show is almost like a procedural drama where the owner's hopeless, resists change, finally sees the light, and then all is set aright by the end. At least in the 5 episodes I've seen.

ape4 13y ago
Also, not all advice from the expert is correct. Maybe there is a good reason not to change the name.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  While I'm all for the HN anti-expert contrarian commentary, let's take a moment to think about this. You, the owner of a failing business, have one view. Gordon Ramsay, the owner of one of the most successful high end restaurant empires in the world, after hearing your justifications, has another. With only this evidence, which view is most likely to be correct?
  - JetSpiegel 13y ago
    None, because both have speeches written by the same writers.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      Actually not everything is scripted. Actually, in the original show, nothing it's scripted, the sameness comes from following the same procedure and the director knowning how to edit it for drama. You'll hear people saying BS things that you'd never expect a business owner to say, much less a scripted one. And not all businesses he talks to are "saved" in the end. Some are just hopeless.
    - gamblor956 13y ago
      Reality shows are not scripted. They are simply carefully edited from many hours of footage to create the "story" that the producers are looking for. When necessary, the producers may intervene to create drama, but for the most part participants are selected for their ability to create drama out of thin air. (This is why reality show participants are so colorful and outlandish.)
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    Or to Don Draper put it on Mad Men: "You've already tried your plan, and you're number four." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps In other words: when you run a failing business, the only thing you know for certain is that keeping on doing what you've been doing will fail. Will a particular new plan work? Who knows. But you need to be open to doing something.
zabraxias 13y ago
I am with you on this one on most "reality" shows I've seen. In reality nobody asks me to go to a confession room to explain my supposed reasoning in front of a camera. I also find it ridiculous that they always keep the most abrasive yet sub-par contestants until the end to drive up conflict for the added drama. Having said that I agree with the premise of the author's article since I've worked with too many small business owners in my early days of web development and most of them seemed to reject our tech/marketing strategy for theirs even though they usually waited until a crisis hit before calling us to begin with.
CurrentB 13y ago
I have a hard time getting past this aspect of reality TV. I recently watched a few episodes of "The Profit" which is basically "Kitchen Nightmares" but for businesses, but it just really bothers me how staged it all seems and how resistant people are to take the advice of a guy on a show who they surely put in a ton of effort to get on and must have seen before. When watching this stuff with other people I find it annoying how no one else really see's through the clearly contrived story they're trying to tell.
salehenrahman 13y ago
No matter how much those conflicts are all made up, I've noticed attitudes like these are far too common.
tinbad 13y ago
I happen to live with someone who watches these shows a lot (Kitchen Nightmares, Restaurant Impossible, Save my bar or whatever it's called, etc) and I can totally see how this stuff is pretty fake as each episode always follows the same script and the owners always resist at first, but give in at the end and praise the 'expert'. So I'm not sure if parallels with a 'reality' TV show are entirely in place and representative of what's going on in the real world. That said the type of 'businessman' the author talks about is everything but fictional. In my 7 years running a web consultancy agency I've come across a lot of these wantrepreneurs who value their status and opinion more than value provided to their customers. I also have been trying to avoid this type of customers as the 20/80 rule applies here very much: 20% of your customers give you 80% of your headaches. My experience with a lot of these 'family' businesses is also that these people often get into the business by heritage and not necessarily because they want to.
smacktoward 13y ago
I would generally agree with this, but the one exception I would make would be for the original British version of Ramsay's show. (It was called "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares"; they cut the title to just "Kitchen Nightmares" for the US version.) That show, especially in the first couple of seasons, skipped the usual reality-show tropes and really dug in to the nitty-gritty elements of running a successful restaurant -- which it showed pretty clearly are the same as the elements of running any successful business: know your customers, watch your money, care about your work. There was real human drama in that show that you just don't see very often on TV. Of course, then they brought it to America and threw all that insightful stuff out to make room for trumped-up shouting matches and canned sound effects of rattlesnakes. What a disappointment. Both versions are up for streaming on Netflix, if you want to see what I mean; make sure to look for "Ramsay's" in the title to get the UK version. Watch the first episode of the first season and you'll understand the difference.
imjk 13y ago
Actually, I think that's what differentiates the Profit from other similar shows. About 50% of the time (so far) Marcus determines that the ownership is unethical, too incompetent, or just too difficult to work with that he decides not to help them. Still makes for great TV.

ape4 13y ago

Also, not all advice from the expert is correct. Maybe there is a good reason not to change the name.

jamesaguilar 13y ago
While I'm all for the HN anti-expert contrarian commentary, let's take a moment to think about this. You, the owner of a failing business, have one view. Gordon Ramsay, the owner of one of the most successful high end restaurant empires in the world, after hearing your justifications, has another. With only this evidence, which view is most likely to be correct?
- JetSpiegel 13y ago
  None, because both have speeches written by the same writers.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Actually not everything is scripted. Actually, in the original show, nothing it's scripted, the sameness comes from following the same procedure and the director knowning how to edit it for drama. You'll hear people saying BS things that you'd never expect a business owner to say, much less a scripted one. And not all businesses he talks to are "saved" in the end. Some are just hopeless.
  - gamblor956 13y ago
    Reality shows are not scripted. They are simply carefully edited from many hours of footage to create the "story" that the producers are looking for. When necessary, the producers may intervene to create drama, but for the most part participants are selected for their ability to create drama out of thin air. (This is why reality show participants are so colorful and outlandish.)
- smacktoward 13y ago
  Or to Don Draper put it on Mad Men: "You've already tried your plan, and you're number four." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y4b-DEkIps In other words: when you run a failing business, the only thing you know for certain is that keeping on doing what you've been doing will fail. Will a particular new plan work? Who knows. But you need to be open to doing something.

zabraxias 13y ago

I am with you on this one on most "reality" shows I've seen. In reality nobody asks me to go to a confession room to explain my supposed reasoning in front of a camera. I also find it ridiculous that they always keep the most abrasive yet sub-par contestants until the end to drive up conflict for the added drama. Having said that I agree with the premise of the author's article since I've worked with too many small business owners in my early days of web development and most of them seemed to reject our tech/marketing strategy for theirs even though they usually waited until a crisis hit before calling us to begin with.

CurrentB 13y ago

I have a hard time getting past this aspect of reality TV. I recently watched a few episodes of "The Profit" which is basically "Kitchen Nightmares" but for businesses, but it just really bothers me how staged it all seems and how resistant people are to take the advice of a guy on a show who they surely put in a ton of effort to get on and must have seen before. When watching this stuff with other people I find it annoying how no one else really see's through the clearly contrived story they're trying to tell.

salehenrahman 13y ago

No matter how much those conflicts are all made up, I've noticed attitudes like these are far too common.

tinbad 13y ago

I happen to live with someone who watches these shows a lot (Kitchen Nightmares, Restaurant Impossible, Save my bar or whatever it's called, etc) and I can totally see how this stuff is pretty fake as each episode always follows the same script and the owners always resist at first, but give in at the end and praise the 'expert'. So I'm not sure if parallels with a 'reality' TV show are entirely in place and representative of what's going on in the real world. That said the type of 'businessman' the author talks about is everything but fictional. In my 7 years running a web consultancy agency I've come across a lot of these wantrepreneurs who value their status and opinion more than value provided to their customers. I also have been trying to avoid this type of customers as the 20/80 rule applies here very much: 20% of your customers give you 80% of your headaches. My experience with a lot of these 'family' businesses is also that these people often get into the business by heritage and not necessarily because they want to.

smacktoward 13y ago

I would generally agree with this, but the one exception I would make would be for the original British version of Ramsay's show. (It was called "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares"; they cut the title to just "Kitchen Nightmares" for the US version.) That show, especially in the first couple of seasons, skipped the usual reality-show tropes and really dug in to the nitty-gritty elements of running a successful restaurant -- which it showed pretty clearly are the same as the elements of running any successful business: know your customers, watch your money, care about your work. There was real human drama in that show that you just don't see very often on TV. Of course, then they brought it to America and threw all that insightful stuff out to make room for trumped-up shouting matches and canned sound effects of rattlesnakes. What a disappointment. Both versions are up for streaming on Netflix, if you want to see what I mean; make sure to look for "Ramsay's" in the title to get the UK version. Watch the first episode of the first season and you'll understand the difference.

imjk 13y ago

Actually, I think that's what differentiates the Profit from other similar shows. About 50% of the time (so far) Marcus determines that the ownership is unethical, too incompetent, or just too difficult to work with that he decides not to help them. Still makes for great TV.