Biggleswade mum is runner up in Apprentice-style YouTube competition scooping £6k prize

A mother-of-three from Biggleswade came agonisingly close to scooping £20,000 in an Apprentice-style business competition, but still walked away with £6,000 in her pocket.

Despite narrowly missing out on the top prize in YouTube show ‘The Eviction,’ Cherelle Brade says coming runner-up has fired up her ambition to become a a property entrepreneur. The part-time gym instructor, who lives in Chamberlain Park with her husband and young children, beat eight other candidates to reach the final, going head-to-head with a tiler and bathroom fitter from Reading.

Even though the 36-year-old ultimately lost out, she remained defiant in defeat: “Greatness is still coming to me,” she said. “It’s inside me and that will never change. Sometimes you have to sit with the pain. I’m going to sit with it, absorb it and come back better.”

The Eviction took place over several weeks and has been made into a five-part YouTube documentary, with the five episodes having already attracted more than 101,000 views. In the video, Cherelle is seen tackling a series of intensive challenges based on the skills and strategies used by property investors to make money.

The man deciding who should be evicted from the contest after each round was Samuel Leeds, a multi-millionaire developer and trainer who has advised a string of celebrities and sports stars on their property investments, including Love Island’s Jordan Hames. A gas engineer by trade, Cherelle joined Samuel’s Property Investors training academy a year ago and is determined to build on her success in the next few months.

She added: “Taking part in the competition has shown me what I can achieve. I will be putting the £6,000 into property, but I haven’t decided exactly what yet. As Samuel explains, when you are making money in property it allows you to have more free time to do what you want to do. For me that’s fitness and public speaking.”

The event was held in a converted barn in Buckinghamshire with participants split into two teams to undertake the challenges. Tasks included furnishing and staging the barn so that it could be put on the market and sourcing and selling a property investment opportunity. They also had to secure a buy, refurbish, refinance deal, sell it to a room of 200 investors and raise finance.

Cherelle, who was previously a teaching assistant at St Andrew’s Lower School, led her team to victory in the sourcing challenge picking up a quarter share of their £24,000 earnings.

In the final Cherelle in which she was pitted against the ultimate winner Adam Brock, she was asked to prepare a business plan for how she would spend the £20,000. She wanted to use the money to rent out other people’s properties as furnished accommodation. She also planned to set up two other businesses selling deals and providing motivational talks to would-be property entrepreneurs.

Samuel said: “I felt that even if Cherelle had just two rent-to-serviced accommodation units, she could use the profits to take on more. However, I would love to work with her to inspire and help other people. She was amazing.”