On October 18, 1982, a young man flew from London to Los Angeles with $600 in his pocket, no return ticket, and an almost fanatical optimism. At the time there was no reason to think that Mark Burnett, age 22 and fresh out of the British military, would become the mastermind of reality TV and creator of the phenomenally popular shows Survivor and The Apprentice. But Burnett was all about hustle and within hours off the plane he was offered his first job – as a nanny. Welcome to the big time.

That’s right, from Los Angeles nanny to big time producer. Only in America, right?

As Burnett tells it, he persuaded a wealthy Beverly Hills family that his background as a paratrooper would make him the perfect nanny/bodyguard for their children. “My first actual task in America was unloading their dishwasher,” he says. “Which was tricky because I’d never seen one before.” The nanny job, and later gigs selling t-shirts along the sidewalks at Venice Beach, are perfect examples of Burnett’s philosophy that if you’re serious about success, you start small and build. In his book Jump In! Even If You Don’t Know How to Swim (Ballantine, 2005), Burnett says, “People striving to make it don’t consider any task beneath them; they do whatever it takes. I’m still that way.”

Burnett parlayed child care into t-shirts, t-shirts into real estate, and real estate into marketing. He promptly purchased a 1969 Firebird convertible – a muscle car that Burnett considered the embodiment of the American dream – but he was still restless. At a dinner party one night he envied the attention a fellow guest garnered by saying he was a movie producer, but, more important, he saw “I needed to take bigger risks. Somewhere deep in my paratrooper soul still beat the heart of an adventurer.”

Burnett didn’t know television but, thanks to his military training, he did understand the appeal of extreme sports like trekking, rowing, and climbing. He also understood that these challenges brought out the best and worst in people, turning everyday citizens into heroes and villains, and he suspected that this sort of spontaneous drama might make good TV. Burnett’s improbable television empire began with Eco-Challenge, a global extreme-sport competition he developed for the Discovery Channel. The format paved the way for the 1995 debut of Survivor on CBS. Next year Burnett, along with cocreator and executive producer Steven Spielberg – long rumored to be a reality TV fan – will debut a new show, On the Lot, on the Fox network. On each episode contestants will make a brief film, which will be played before a studio audience and panel of judges. The ultimate winner will be offered a job at Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio.

The Firebird eventually died but by the time it did Burnett was through the guard gate and on the grounds of the studios. And from that point on there was no stopping him.

“All success begins with the ability to sell something, whether it’s a shirt or an idea,” says Burnett, and in an exclusive Selling Power interview he outlines five steps to help you survive any corporate jungle.

1. The most important trait for success – whether as a reality show contestant or a businessperson – is flexibility.

Burnett is actively involved in casting his reality shows and says that time after time he has seen contestants who have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances triumph over seemingly stronger competitors. “People who stubbornly believe there is only one way to approach a problem are usually eliminated early,” he says. “They become so obsessed with their plan that they don’t even notice when circumstances around them change.” Reality shows constantly create new challenges and realign teams in ways that lead to unforeseen shifts in power. Burnett believes the business world operates the same way.

“People ask me what it takes to win on a show like Survivor or The Apprentice,” Burnett says “and I tell them that the winners were very different in terms of age or gender or personality type, but they all had one thing in common: the ability to read other people. Flexibility starts with paying attention to the people around you. In selling, the dumb salesperson has one way of presenting…and only one way. He fails to understand there are different types of people and they all require a different kind of sales approach.”

Burnett outlines four different personality types that a good salesperson needs to recognize. “An analytical person wants all the information, all the stats. If they’re going to buy a car they’ll want to go through every fact in the owner’s manual. But an emotional person is going to be more interested in the color of the car, how it smells, how the CD player sounds. If you talk them through an analysis-based sales pitch you’ll lose them. Aggressive people don’t want to be pushed - they basically will lead themselves to the sale if you put your ego in your pocket and let them be the boss. On the other hand, passive people need to be taken by the hand and told what they like and dislike. I’m not talking about bullying them – nobody likes that – but a good salesperson realizes that a passive client prefers to be talked through the process.

“That’s why flexibility matters,” Burnett concludes, “be-cause each different client requires that you read that person, see what they need and tailor your approach to them. If you’re a one-trick pony, you’ll end up selling a lot less.”

2. New ideas are the best ideas – but they have to be presented right.

When Burnett was first marketing reality TV to American networks it was still a new idea. Since most explanations involve comparisons (“My idea is a lot like this” or “Our product is much better than that”) he faced a problem common to all entrepreneurs: How do you bring other people into your vision?

Burnett pitched the concept of Survivor to all the major networks, and they all turned it down. The relatively small UPN was the only channel who liked the idea, but Burnett knew they didn’t have enough money to produce the show in the manner he’d envisioned. So he bravely turned UPN down and decided to make one last run at getting Survivor on CBS.

“In a situation like that you need two things,” he says, “and the first is enthusiasm. You have to engage the other person, to paint the picture, to come in with a high energy level.” Knowing that a large number of the television execs were the emotional type described above, Burnett walked into CBS with a mock copy of Newsweek showing Survivor on the cover and said “That’s how big this is going to be.”

But he also knew that he’d need complete product knowledge to impress the more analytic decision makers. “Enthusiasm is important, but you also must be able to explain how you will do it and exactly what it will cost. They need to have the confidence that you can actually execute.” Burnett, following the Olympic model, had gotten corporate sponsors to help share the financial risk of producing the show and he was also able to reassure the skittish CBS execs with his past track record. “I had done six seasons of Eco Challenge on cable,” he says, “and while cable and network TV are not identical, the fact that I’d successfully produced a challenge show in another venue worked in my favor. If investors or clients can see you’ve had success in one area, they’re more apt to believe you can have success in another, even if it’s new and untried.”

Despite the challenges that come with being a programming pioneer, Burnett believes there are huge advantages to being first in your field. “If you look at my shows,” he says, “there were many later imitations that came and went. Everyone was trying to be the new Survivor and there were even more derivatives of The Apprentice. But the public doesn’t like copycats. They recognize and reward ideas that are fresh so if you want to stay at the top, you have to keep striking out into new territory.”

3. Repetition is the key to retention, so if you want them to remember you, give them plenty of face time.

The Apprentice, as well as being a job competition, a showpiece for Donald Trump, and a very entertaining TV show, has evolved into the perfect advertising medium. Throughout the last four seasons some products stand out, specifically Dove Cucumber Body Wash and the Pontiac Solstice. In the case of Dove, the two competing teams each had to produce a commercial and the results were so ludicrously inappropriate that the Dove executives were rendered speechless with horror and Trump gave the would-be apprentices one of the most memorable tongue-lashings of the series, if not history.

The Pontiac Solstice story went a little differently. This time the two competing teams had to develop a product brochure for a new sports car. One team missed the mark by being overly-analytical, but the other team delivered such an outstanding brochure that Pontiac opted to actually use it to sell the car.

What the two stories have in common is that in both cases you remember Dove Cucumber Body Wash and the Pontiac Solstice, which is remarkable retention for a one-shot marketing effort. It seems that whether the teams perform woefully or well, The Apprentice is a great launching pad for new products.

“People still talk about some of our shows weeks, months, and years after the fact,” says Burnett “and they remember the products involved.” Burnett believes viewers retain the message because it’s presented in a fun way. “Contestants are screwing up or doing great and, either way, it’s entertaining to watch. Because you’re seeing that new product in a novel context, you retain the memory.”

There’s also the matter of repetition. The whole episode is based on that one product, making the show in essence an hour-long commercial for the company being featured.

It’s a remarkably successful way to draw advertisers but Burnett admits they “got into it backwards. We needed content each week, which means we needed tasks for our contestants to do. You can’t have them selling lemonade on a street corner for 16 straight episodes. In order to add credibility to the show, we want real-word scenarios. If the task is to develop a new flavor of ice cream for Baskin Robbins, we can’t build a set for that. We take them right into the Baskin Robbins plant.”

“Without the actual use of brands the show wouldn’t be as good. If we’re testing these people to see if they’re sharp enough to be an executive for Donald Trump, we need to see them working with genuine Fortune 500 companies. We did it to make good TV and the fact it turned out to be so great for the sponsoring companies is just a bonus. The brands love it because it cuts through the problem of TiVo. You can’t TiVo through a whole show.”

Face time matters in another way, too. Burnett refuses to pitch ideas over the phone. When trying to woo Donald Trump to host The Apprentice, Burnett was originally shot down by Trump’s agent. Undeterred, Burnett knocked directly on Trump’s door and, after a 20-minute conversation, Trump shrugged off his agent’s trepidation and said “My gut tells me this is going to work.” Realizing he’d found a kindred spirit, Burnett immediately proposed a deal that would make Trump not only the host but a partner. But…

4. Don’t expect it to always be easy.

“My story is as much about failures and nearly catastrophic moments as it is about success,” says Burnett. He’s had plenty of setbacks along the way. 9/11 wiped out plans for Survivor: Arabia before filming even began. Other shows were produced, aired and sunk like a stone, including the highly-hyped boxing reality show The Contender and Martha Stewart’s version of The Apprentice.

“If you plan every move and analyze every angle you might be able to pre-think half of what could go wrong,” says Burnett. “The only thing you can be certain of in business is that problems you have not yet thought of are headed your way. Successful people know they aren’t going to close every sale, they aren’t going to hear a ‘yes’ every time they suggest an idea. You can promise something in good faith and then find that circumstances make it difficult to deliver.”

Burnett, who once had a parachute fail to open while skydiving, knows all about performing under pressure. “There are times,” he says, “when all you can do is persevere and try not to repeat the same mistake down the road again. It doesn’t feel good at the time but you can almost always learn something from adversity.”

5. Surround yourself with the best people possible.

What’s more likely to make you a winner, the ability to strike out on your own or the ability to be a team player? After years of watching as some contestants/showbusinesses fail while others thrive, Burnett doesn’t hesitate with his answer.

“I never go it alone,” he says. “A leader is only as good as his team. The oil billionaire J. Paul Getty said, ‘Take away the oil fields and the factories, but leave me my 50 best people and I’ll have it all back double in five years,’ and it’s the same with me.”

At various times throughout his career, Burnett has aligned himself with Donald Trump, Martha Stewart, Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone. Not exactly a low-profile group, and not exactly people known for small egos. “Only a dumb person tries to shine by surrounding themselves with weak people,” he says. “In my employees I hire people smarter than myself and in a partnership I look for the strongest allies I can find. If you’re good at what you do, they’ll recognize that, so you shouldn’t be frightened of working with the best.

“Successful people,” Burnett says, “recognize strength in other people. Look at Trump’s assistants on the show. George has worked with him forever and Carolyn has been there for 10 years, so when Trump tells contestants that George and Carolyn are his eyes and ears he means it. Strong people surround themselves with other strong people and keep them there. That’s how you build empires.” •