The Winner’s Circle: Shawn Nelson of ‘The Rebel Billionaire: Branson’s Quest For The Best’

The Rebel Billionaire: Branson’s Quest For The Best was an interesting series for FOX. Following the success of The Apprentice and the failure of The Benefactor, it similarly involved an incredibly rich host, weekly eliminations, and the awarding of a fantastic prize. Although it struggled to gain favor with the viewing audience, the show featured an engaging host who actually participated in many of the challenges, some truly spectacular stunts, and a generally watchable, entertaining group of contestants.

Through all this, a winner emerged – Shawn Nelson. In fact, well before series conclusion, it became apparent to many viewers that Shawn was destined to triumph. Indeed, in the final two episodes editing tried to introduce some doubt into this all-but-foregone conclusion.

So, how did Shawn achieve victory?

Oh, Shawn had his chances to lose this show. He made several blunders, and some of them were lulus! But for each of his faux pas, he made a strong and positive action to offset it.

Right off the bat, his abrasive side came out when he made questionable comments about his host (“He owes me money”), and declined to carry his own luggage – letting an apparently older taxicab driver (who was actually Branson in disguise) do it for him. He offset this by carrying not only his own luggage in the future, but also often that of other competitors.

He abandoned teammate Sara to sure failure in the London “Balloon Cross” challenge. But later in London (after the Tokyo challenge), he stood up for teammates under the attack of the Brunette Bully Brigade.

He failed at the jump/catch task in Zimbabwe. But when Nicole did not choose him as an opponent in the elimination challenge, we got an early indication that other players respected Shawn.

After being a wildly unsuccessful leader in the London-Publicity challenge, Shawn survived another failure in the elimination challenge when his cryptic slogan was deemed to be better than Michael’s. This was an early indication that he was now being favorably considered by Sir Richard.

And in the finale on Necker Island, he performed poorly on several challenges. Although their individual presentations were about equal, Sara out-thought him on the physical challenge, and in The Inquisition, Shawn snapped back at his questioners and showed off his poor listening skills. But his opponent, Sara, also messed up here, and this limited the impact of Shawn’s stumble. Additionally, he had shown his people skills in Ulusaba, bonding with the locals.

So, what else did Shawn do right? Well, several things.

1. When it was his turn to perform a stunt, he was fearless.
2. He did not hold back his ideas, whether they were good (music in Japan), bad (sofa bonfire), or overly ambitious (Jewish-Arabic soccer). Branson wouldn’t admire players who didn’t take the lead and contribute fully.
3. He is multi-lingual, including Mandarin.

Paraphrasing what Branson said, Shawn was a firebrand with moments of brilliance, though sometimes countered with flashes of disaster.

Probably the reasons he won more than any play of the game itself, were:

• His personal style of “Mormon punk” resembled the “Branson approach” more than that of any other competitor.
• His aggressive management style of his company, “Lovesac,” more closely resembled the “Virgin way” than that of any other competitor’s company.

If this show were The Apprentice, Shawn might not have won, but for The Rebel Billionaire: Branson’s Quest For The Best, Shawn had the right combination of background, skills and personality require to win. And that is why he is in the Winner’s Circle!

Brian is an unemployed/retired programmer from Toronto who really needs a free trip to Necker Island. He can be reached at uncle_bto@rogers.com. You can click here for his previous articles on this show.

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