Keir Shave The Apprentice: Yorkshire contestant ‘really gutted’ to leave BBC show but has no regrets and shares his experiences completing tasks and future goals for his Leeds-based telemarketing business

Keir Shave, originally from Harrogate, was the latest candidate to be fired on the 19th series of The Apprentice.

The businessman had a lot to prove on the show and feels he has achieved what he set out to do.

Though he is ‘really gutted’ to have been fired before reaching the top five, his experience filming the series and completing the tasks have given his company the exposure he was aiming for.

“One of the things I wanted to do on the show was of course to get into the top five, so I am really gutted that I didn’t get that far especially how I performed up until last night’s episode,” Mr Shave told The Yorkshire Post.

“But I wouldn’t say [I have] any major regrets. There wasn’t too much attention on me in any of the boardrooms, not many people were saying I was the fault from any of the tasks.

“I think I held myself well, I sold a lot, I represented myself and my company well.

“It was a really good experience; not many people in the world get to say that they’ve been on [The Apprentice].

“I got to go to a couple of really nice locations, I’ve worked as project manager, so I ticked off a lot of the goals going onto the show. I left with good feelings towards the whole process.”

Mr Shave, 27, set up his Leeds-based telemarketing business Parallel Partnerships in just three days after he was made redundant by his previous employer along with around 200 employees.

His business grew from zero staff to more than 50 in just two years and he wanted to showcase his skillset by competing on the BBC show.

“I wanted to prove to the world that I have really good business acumen,” he said.

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“I wanted to prove to the world that I had good sales ability and if I’m honest, I really wanted to gain some eyes, some attention, on me and my company.

“The company’s really good and I wanted more people to know about it and there’s no better way than putting yourself on TV.

“My company is called Parallel Partnerships and that’s why I named the team in episode four ‘Parallel’. I managed to get away with that so I was very happy.

“We’re an outsourced sales business; we help companies that either don’t want to have the headache of an internal sales team or just want to grow their sales team but want to do it externally. We represent a variety of clients and sell their products or their services over the telephone.”

He enjoyed many aspects of the show, including introducing his unusual sales method with the other candidates.

“My highlights were definitely [from] episode one,” Mr Shave said.

“I feel like I got a lot of screen time, which I was really happy with. I did the Rock, Paper, Scissors [sales method] which I still really love.

“It's a bit of a running joke with me and my friends and my company. I'm glad I managed to do that on TV.

“My main highlight was definitely in week six when I worked as project manager; that feeling to win whilst being abroad in such a nice country and doing the cappadocia full experience in those hot air balloons was really fun. I was glad I was on the tour team for that one.”

There was one valuable lesson Mr Shave learned from being on the show that has helped with his business.

“How to deal with teams and with people you wouldn’t necessarily pick to work with,” he said.

“Naturally in a business setting you either pick to work with or hire people, so you’ve selected to hire them for a reason.

“In this process, you are thrown in with people you don’t really know and you’ve got to adapt and learn with them.

“I think the agility to learn and work well with different teams and different people is something that I’ve definitely picked up [whilst on The Apprentice].

“I wouldn’t say my cooking abilities have improved, I’m still not a great cook but it’s not my skillset.”

Mr Shave admitted that he struggled with the time restrictions on the show.

“The biggest challenges were definitely the time constraints,” he said.

“It doesn’t look like that in the edit but there are a lot of things that were really short in time, whether we were [coming up with] a name or making a video.

“It was quite hard to get everything done in the timeframe because I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I like to get it bang on.”

Mr Shave said that what’s shown on screen isn’t necessarily the reality.

“I know sometimes it might look on screen that people don’t get on but at the end of the day, it is a TV show and off-camera we all got on really well,” he said.

“Anything that was disagreed over we always just left it to the boardroom.

“One thing that was sometimes a little annoying was when people would want to chat after a task and at that point I was chatted out.

“Something that people don’t realise is that you are generally woken up at 2/3am and you do generally go to sleep at 10/11pm.

“I had been filming most of the day so sometimes it was hard to get alone time. But other than that it had really good vibes, we got on, we had fun on our days off so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I’m not going to houseshare any time soon.”

Mr Shave said his long term plans for his company are to continue sustainable growth and expand the business internationally.

“Currently we are talking with several really experienced people that I’m trying to bring in to strengthen our senior management team,” he said.

“I want to try to get closer to 80 [staff] in the next twelve months and I am considering opening up a second location, potentially abroad.

“I would say that we are really agile; we’re small enough that we care for all of our clients.

“We’ve got a really good talent pool of salespeople that means that companies that can’t find good staff can use us to tap into that ability without all the massive costs and overhead of hiring internally.

“We’ve exceeded seven figures in both of our years [in the business], we’ve created a lot of opportunities for people in the local area, so I’m very proud of what we’ve done so far. There’s always a silver lining.”

He had one last message for the public.

“That it is a TV programme and that throughout the whole process I worked incredibly hard,” Mr Shave said.

“I was very impressed with how I’ve come across so far and I want to thank everyone for all the lovely messages.

“I’ve had lots of support, I’ve had lots of people who thought I would make the top five, that felt really good.”