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Brendan

Reality TVClubHouse Discussions: Survivor ARCHIVES: Survivor XVIII - Tocantins (Brasil): The Cast: Brendan users admin

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Heyltslori
Moderator

09-15-2001

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 12:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Heyltslori a private message Print Post    
Brendan

Biography
Brendan Synnott (30)
Hometown: New York, N.Y.
Occupation: Entrepreneur

Brendan Synnott is all about playing the game. Whether it is in front of a classroom teaching entrepreneurial success or taking part in outdoor extreme adventures, he knows how to read the odds.

Raised by a single mom in Connecticut, Brendan pulled himself up by the bootstraps to be the co-founder and CEO of Bear Naked, a natural food brand that was recently acquired by a major corporation. Despite his financial success, he is not all about the money.

Success to him, however, is about more than simply creating, building and selling a thriving business; it's about hard work, passion, fun and surrounding yourself with the best people.

Synnott has always wanted to combine his love of the outdoors with his skills as a leader. In school, he played both football and baseball, and still stays active as much as possible. He loves to compete and says it's a driving force, even in business. It will especially be a driving force on SURVIVOR.

Brendan is single and currently resides in Vail, Colo. His birth date is Sept. 28.

Tntitanfan
Member

08-03-2001

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 3:59 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tntitanfan a private message Print Post    
I have my fingers crossed that no one recognizes his name or face from financial news pages!

Chy
Member

07-19-2003

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 4:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Chy a private message Print Post    
Minturn resident on 'Survivor'
Brendan Synnott, a cast member of the upcoming season of CBS’s ‘Survivor,’ sought adventure, not money
Lauren Glendenning
lglendenning@vaildaily.com
Vail CO, Colorado

Minturn resident Brendan Synnott, left, plays a game of Jenga with his friend Angela Rossi on Sunday in his home. Synnott is on the new season of “Survivor,” set to premiere next month.
Kristin Anderson/Vail DailyMINTURN, Colorado — When Brendan Synnott heard he would be a cast member on the CBS reality TV show “Survivor,” he went to the local fish market back home in Connecticut and asked if the employees there could show him how to gut a fish.

“They taught me how to rip out the gills and gut it and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I had done it one time before I had to do it for my only food source, if there was going to be fish down there (in Brazil).”

Synnott is the kind of guy who’s up for anything, said his friend Angela Rossi, who lives in Edwards. He’s athletic and has a good head on his shoulders — two traits Rossi said are perfect for “Survivor.”

Synnott, of Minturn, went to Brazil for two months this past fall to film the show. He couldn’t contact his friends or family during the trip, and since his return he hasn’t been able to say much about what he experienced there.

CBS makes sure the cast members stay tight-lipped about the show until the episodes play out on television. A CBS representative, Brett Gold, was even on the phone with the Vail Daily while we interviewed Synnott for this story.

‘Nothing to lose’
Rossi and Brad Ludden, of Gypsum, both have no idea how far their buddy made it in the show. Contestants get eliminated one by one until the final man or woman standing is announced in the finale. That winner also gets a million bucks.

It’s hard to know how difficult the show was for Synnott. He couldn’t tell us whether he lost any weight, what the contestants ate, whether he experienced any physical changes or discovered what his weaknesses are in the wilderness.

He said he tried to prepare for the adjustment as much as possible, but it was hard to prepare for such a drastic change.

“They take away everything that you know that you’re comfortable with in your own life, and so you try to think about what that’s going to feel like,” Synnott said. “But until somebody actually takes it away from you, I don’t think you can actually know that.”
Ludden said he knew Synnott would get chosen to do the show if Synnott were to apply.

“He’s made for it,” Ludden said.

Synnott, a Vanderbilt University alum, is smart, Ludden said. He helped found a granola company, Bear Naked, with a friend in 2002. The company took off, and the pair sold it in late 2007 for $60 million, according to CNN.

“A lot of the strategy he used in his business he could put to work (on “Survivor”) as well,” Ludden said. “He sort of went into it with nothing to lose (which) makes him a great contestant.”

Motivated by adventure
The $1 million grand prize has been a motivator for many contestants on past seasons of the show, but for Synnott, it was the thrill of the game. He agreed to do the show for the experience of it all. He wasn’t looking for fame or fortune, he said. He saw the game as something that really mimics his approach to business — they take away everything and you have to break yourself down and start from scratch to rebuild, he said.

“I hope to win a million dollars, but I’m not going to be devastated without it,” he said. “For me this is really about just having a great experience and I’m going to go on with my life the same way I would anyway. ... It was about challenging myself in a way that is really unique and is pretty hard to replicate anywhere else.”

After Synnott’s success with selling his business, he has focused a lot on philanthropy. He started a nonprofit organization recently called ONUS. He says the concept is adventure philanthropy, much like his friend Ludden’s organization First Descents, which takes cancer survivors on kayaking trips to rebuild their minds and spirits. Synnott hates seeing organizations that do good things struggle because its funding sources have dried up because of the economy. Instead, he wants to take adventure philanthropy and give people some value for their donations.

If Synnott wins the “Survivor” grand prize, he would give the money to ONUS, he said. The show ends in May, but there’s no finale date scheduled yet.

Lauren Glendenning can be reached at 970-748-2983 or lglendenning@vaildaily.com.

Chy
Member

07-19-2003

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 4:37 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Chy a private message Print Post    
Long article for our small box!
((I didn't want to just paste the long link.))

That's SF's find also.

I just want to comment on the 60 mill.
Wonder why a lot are saying he's worth 120 millions?

Tnt, I'm also worried that he's just going to tell people who he is!

It's a dilemma! To tell or not to tell?
If you don't tell and people find out later, you're screwed even more. Don't you think?

Tntitanfan
Member

08-03-2001

Thursday, January 22, 2009 - 6:02 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Tntitanfan a private message Print Post    
The 120 million IS puzzling if the company was founded "with a friend" and sold for 60 million in all. I would think the friend got a portion of the profits too -

Gidget
Member

07-28-2002

Wednesday, February 04, 2009 - 3:16 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Gidget a private message Print Post    
I eat that stuff. I love it. I'm intrigued now.

Chy
Member

07-19-2003

Wednesday, February 04, 2009 - 5:18 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Chy a private message Print Post    
BTW, to continue that thought about him telling people who he is or not, DeBBB already recognized him. He should tell, or at least not lie about it. He'll probably say head for a charity org.? (ONUS)

Chy
Member

07-19-2003

Saturday, February 07, 2009 - 4:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Chy a private message Print Post    
Brendan Synnott: “I want to win; when I play games, I love to win”

Brendan Synnott is one of the three already well-known/famous contestants on Survivor Tocantins. He is well-known for co-founding Bear Naked granola and selling it for millions to Kellogg’s, but is also known by obsessive fans who discovered his casting video on YouTube back in September.
Brendan was one of the most enthusiastic contestants I talked to, but in a good way. “I can’t wait to do all that stuff,” he said of daily camp life and the challenges. “This is so fun. What an awesome, unique experience to have and to go through.” He’s also ready to play the game: “I want to win; when I play games, I love to win. I didn’t come here just to come on vacation; I could have done that somewhere else with a lot more freedom,” he said.
As a recruit, Brendan at first had “no reason to do it” but then thought Survivor would be “fun. I love to compete, I love outdoor adventure, I love to play games; I’m kind of in-between jobs so why not?” Like all recruits, he was asked to make a video, which he posted to YouTube, baffling fans online who discovered it. I asked casting director Lynne Spillman about that incident, and she said that “a lot of times, when we do last-minute recruiting” casting has contestants “upload to web sites [like YouTube] all the time, to private, and then we have them take it right down.” Brendan’s was public for four hours one day last September, and Spillman told me, “he’s perplexed, we have no idea. It was posted to private.”
When I asked him about it in Brazil, Brendan said he “assume[s] everybody knows” about that video (Ben/Coach definitely does) and said, “maybe it’ll put me at a disadvantage, I don’t know.” He contradicted Spillman’s account indirectly, as he never said anything about it being private, instead pointing out that he knew it was public. “They just wanted to see a video and so the best way to do that was via YouTube,” he told me. “I was just doing as I was told and as soon as I saw the reaction, I fixed it the best way I could.” When I asked the obvious—why send them a video publicly?—he said, “I was just doing what I was kind of told. I understand YouTube is public, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. … I was completely surprised, like, what the
Besides the notoriety (as to any criticism of the contents of that video or his posting of it, he says he “take[s] it with a smile”), I bring this example up first because it illustrated something about Brendan: When I started asking about it, he looked at me with a skeptical expression, and only eventually revealed what he really thought (“what the In other words, he’s extremely cautious, and I’m not sure how that and his lack of a poker face will play in the game. Over our 25 minutes, though, which ended as rainfall started (hear it below), he opened up, ending with him engaging me in conversation about my job and reality TV in general, so I’d assume that’ll happen in his tribe, too. Plus, successful business people tend to know how to schmooze.
Brendan’s cautiousness came into play as he answered a few questions When I asked him about impressions of others, he said he has a “pretty good sense of how pecking orders work and how personalities are,” but although I asked multiple times, he wouldn’t identify those people, and eventually cited the rules about not communicating with others (“I don’t think we’re supposed to do that”).
However, he went on to say that pre-judging others would be a bad idea, as would having “too much of a game plan, because ultimately if you stick to that, and you’re blind to what you should be doing, then I don’t think you’re going to get the right outcome.” He said that “so much of it’s just reading people, and how you play the game’s going to depend upon the dynamic you enter into depending upon what your tribe looks like.”
While he said “I like to take leadership roles,” whether or not he steps up as a leader “depends upon the dynamic of the tribe.” Still, Brendan insisted, “if I need to be [a leader], I will; I don’t have a problem with it.” Brendan also told me, “I think the best strategy is to make your tribe as comfortable as possible and provide leadership where they need it, and to ultimately win the immunity challenges where you can.” He’s not worried about the physical challenges (“I’m pretty confident in that part of my game”), but “[doesn’t] want to seem threatening, I guess.”
Brendan is extremely articulate and passionate, and talked with great enthusiasm and animation about his current projects, including working with First Descents, which he’s making a documentary about, and working on his project ONUS, which Facebook page describes as “Social Capitalism With Commercial Teeth.”
Since selling Bear Naked in late 2007, he’s done various work, but said, “ultimately I love the idea of venture philanthropy. … I would like to work with organizations” and “help them productize what they’re doing and actually create a business out of it, so that way they’re not dependent upon economic times that determines their budgets,” Brendan told me. “I like the idea of bringing in for-profit mentalities and efficiencies into the non-profit world.”
As to the business world, Brendan said, “business to me is a big game,” and considers Survivor to be a similar “big game.” In that televised game, he wouldn’t really define his parameters for how he’ll behave, even though some behavior is off-limits in real life.
“I don’t lie in my daily life; I’m not going to like on a game show; it’s not worth it,” Brendan told me, although he qualified that by saying, “I don’t know what it’s like to be in this game, so I can’t say exactly what I will or won’t do. My hope and my intention is to stay as true to myself as possible, and I value honest relationships in my life. I don’t know if it’s going to be like real life out there or not; we’ll see.”
Get a preview of Brazil’s awesome rainy season (and this wasn’t even the heavy rain, really) as you hear Brendan talk about observing the others at Ponderosa; the financial crisis and his project ONUS; and being broken down mentally, physically, and emotionally on TV:

Dogdoc
Member

09-29-2001

Sunday, February 22, 2009 - 10:25 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Dogdoc a private message Print Post    
A woman in church today overheard me talking to someone about Survivor. She said that Brenden is the grandson of a high school classmate of her's. The classmate has been e-mailing information. My friend said that Kraft foods bought the granola company for 60 million. Brenden owned it with his girlfriend.