March 2010
WHIRL Features > Survivor Brendan Synnott's Pittsburgh Interview
Early on, Brendan Synnott was one to look for an opportunity and capitalize on it. As an elementary school student, he came from Connecticut to spend every summer with his grandparents in Mt. Lebanon. His “Poppy,” Jerry Scherer, would take him to club stores, and Synnott would amass bags of bulk candy. Upon returning to school in the fall, he would sell the candy out of his locker.
Ever the outdoor buff, Synnott loves to “play outside,” every chance he gets.
Early on, Brendan Synnott was one to look for an opportunity and capitalize on it. As an elementary school student, he came from Connecticut to spend every summer with his grandparents in Mt. Lebanon. His “Poppy,” Jerry Scherer, would take him to club stores, and Synnott would amass bags of bulk candy. Upon returning to school in the fall, he would sell the candy out of his locker. “They didn’t have vending machines in my school,” he explains.
Synnott co-founded Bear Naked Granola in 2002 with childhood friend Kelly Flatley. In 2007, they sold the company to Kellogg’s as part of a $122 million deal. Exactly one year after the food company took ownership of Bear Naked, in February, the 30-year-old found himself on a plane to the Brazilian Highlands to participate in the 18th series of CBS’s Survivor: Tocantins.
“I love kind of being shaken down and broken apart and then trying to have to figure things out again,” Synnott says. “When I sold my business, there was great windfall and all that, but then one year later, it was time to go [do something new], and play another game for a million dollars again.”
Synnott made it through eight episodes of the show, until he was eliminated, a surprise to himself, other players, and viewers. In a post-elimination interview on the show, he seemed philosophical and slightly removed from the game, which he calls “brilliant.”
“The thing with Survivor is that it’s reality television, but it’s more like a documentary. They don’t manipulate it: What you see out there actually happens,” Synnott says. “It’s not like they’re feeding us words or anything. I have a whole new respect for how that show is produced.”
For Synnott, who lost twelve pounds during the eight weeks that he was in the Brazilian Highlands, the worst part of the “surviving” experience wasn’t the lack of creature comforts, such as food and soft sleeping quarters, but rather, the constant deceit that the players must propagate. “You don’t come across that too often in life, and it’s a pretty awful experience,” he says. “The one thing I missed the most was my family and friends, the people I can just be totally honest with, and you just can’t do that on the show.”
Synnott was born in Western Pennsylvania; his father, Thomas Synnott, lives in Wexford and is a partner in TSA Advet, a software development firm. His grandfather, Jerry Scherer, still lives in Mt. Lebanon, and owns the equipment brokerage firm Graphtek. His grandmother, Frances Synnott, also lives in Mt. Lebanon. When Synnott was 1, his parents divorced and he moved with his mother, Kathy, to Maryland and then to Connecticut when he was 5, and grew up there. During his summer visits to Pittsburgh, he best remembers going to Pittsburgh Pirates games with his grandmother, Nanny, in the early 1990s, when Andy Van Slyke, Bobby Bonilla, and Barry Bonds were on the team, as well as trips to Sandcastle and Kennywood. Synnott was always athletic himself, and was the quarterback of his high school football team in Darien, Conn.
Again, in high school, Synnott was an entrepreneur. In the summer before his senior year, unbeknownst to anyone, he had branded school T-shirts printed to promote the upcoming season, which he sold at the football team’s pre-season training camp.
“He impressed a lot of the parents, many of whom worked on Wall Street, with his initiative,” his father says.
The future businessman matriculated Vanderbilt University and graduated in 2000 with a degree in economics. Post-college, he worked for a stint at a software company in Austin, Texas, and then moved to New York City to take a job as a talent manager for NBC’s Saturday Night Live. During the time that he was working on SNL, he reconnected with Flatley on a visit home to Connecticut, and became interested in working with her to grow the Bear Naked granola company. They became business partners in 2002. “I’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs in my family. I think I grew up seeing the freedom and the joy that owning a business provided them and I think I wanted a little piece of that for myself,” Synnott says. Flatley made the granola, and Synnott marketed the company, separating their granola from the rest of the pack: Innovations included implementing a slick design and packaging the granola in a clear plastic pouch, which served two purposes: It allowed consumers to actually see the product, and it differentiated it from other cereals. The Bear Naked team taught consumers that they could eat granola as a snack instead of just a breakfast cereal. These different elements combined to make the product the top granola product in the nation, ousting Kellogg’s and Quaker from the top spots.
A few months after the sale of Bear Naked, Synnott got a phone call from a friend in the television industry saying that Survivor needed another contestant; after his audition, he found himself on a plane to Brazil.
Following Survivor, Synnott, who now makes his home in Vail, Colo., where he can regularly pursue skiing and mountain biking, isn’t wasting time embarking on his next business venture: This fall, he will launch EvolBurritos with his business partner Tom Spier, of Spier Consumer Capital, LLC, and do for the humble burrito what he and Flatley did for granola. “The only difference is that where, something like three out of 10 people in America like granola, nine out of 10 people like burritos! So, hopefully it’s a bigger opportunity,” he says.
“Brendan has almost a visionary quality with respect to marketing and brands,” says Spier, who met Synnott at Vanderbilt and became the COO and CFO of Bear Naked. He handles the operations and finance for their business ventures, while Synnott is more about brand management. “He really does have a sense of what’s going to be novel, or for lack of a better word, cool. He really understands what consumers want.”
The natural foods Synnott has been involved with marketing are in concert with his own healthful lifestyle. “I’m very active. I like to play outside as much as possible, and because of that, I like to eat. But I am a big believer in eating products that have simple ingredients statements, foods that aren’t processed. I don’t believe in eating anything artificial, and I don’t know why you would want to put those things in your body. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.” he says. “With all of the products that I’m involved with, they’re all products that I would happily give to my family, my kids if I had any, or my friends, and be really proud that I am giving them great food.”
“Survivor is such a unique experience. And me, I could never pass up such an awesome experience.” — Brendan SynnottSynnott’s other endeavor is the non-profit organization First Descents, which organizes kayaking and outdoor adventure camps for young adults fighting cancer. Synnott is on the board, and First Descents is so important to him that he asks me to mention them in the article, “even if it means you have to leave out the part about the burritos.”
First Descents was founded in 2001 by a then 18-year-old Brad Ludden, a professional kayaker in Vail who started the camp with $10,000. Synnott met Ludden through a mutual friend when he moved to Vail, and in addition to their friendship, which includes plenty of extreme outdoors adventures, he is working with Ludden to figure out how they can double the number of camps they offer. As it stands, First Descents works with about 150 cancer patients and survivors per season. “You might think, ‘Oh, that’s a huge number,’“ Synnott says. “But when you think about how that turns a life around for that person, and how many other people that cancer survivor impacts — their spouse, or their kids, or parents, or friends — it’s a large number of people that end up getting pretty inspired to take on the big challenge in their life.”
“Brendan is involved with First Descents for no other reason than the right reason. He cares about the cause, and he lends himself, his resources, and his knowledge, which has been invaluable,” Ludden says. “He is an absolute genius; he thinks at a level that very few people can comprehend, and his perspective, knowledge, and experience bring so much to any organization or company that he touches.”
Synnott himself is all about having great experiences in life; he is not concerned about celebrity, calculating that exactly four people on the street have recognized him for his Survivor appearance.
In Western Pennsylvania, however, he might have more of a following than he realizes. His father says that Brendan’s 12-year-old sister, Hannah, and her friends at Marshall Middle School were pretty excited to follow the show. Thomas Synnott says that both Hannah and Brendan are “serious-minded,” so he was surprised when his son decided to appear on Survivor.
“His mother and I were concerned that his participation in the show might cause people not to appreciate his seriousness [in future business endeavors],” his father says.
But, based on Synnott’s track record, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem.
“I don’t plan on leveraging Survivor at all,” Synnott says, with his signature positive, adventurous outlook. “For me, it was about having a good time, something that only a few people get to do. It’s so unique, and to me, I could never pass up such an awesome experience.”
Bear Naked. EvolBurritos. First Descents, P.O. Box 2193, Vail, Col. 81658. 970.845.8400. Survivor, cbs.com.
To purchase the rights to reprint this article, please email Jennifer Diamond.