How To Get A Leg Up With A Reality TV Coach

Long before a bombshell enters the villa to shake things up or a mother of two wrestles some Gen Z rivals for an immunity idol, there’s one challenge many reality TV stars face: the audition video. It’s the first test as they vie for the attention of casting producers, hoping to stand out enough in just a few frames and sound bites to make it to the next round. In the case of CBS’s Survivor, there are on average 25,000 applicants a cycle for a mere 18 spots.

Not all hopefuls go it alone. Adam Klein, who took home the $1 million prize on Survivor’s 33rd season in 2016, is just one veteran who’ll fine-tune your video for a fee. He’s part of the mini ecosystem of reality TV coaches who help applicants put their best foot forward with their audition tape. There are other ways Klein coaches his clients when it comes to the singular experience of surviving reality TV — feeling more confident during confessionals, getting thrusted into a temporary limelight, seeing how the show’s edit portrays you — but he’s primarily sought after for granular advice about first-impression videos.

“I will watch their video, pause every few seconds, and give feedback,” he says, sometimes giving notes before he even presses play. (Vertical videos and backlit setups are immediate no-gos.) “Then we’ll look at the introduction and be like, ‘Are you coming across likable in the first three seconds of the video?’ We’ll pause again.”

Prior to the pandemic, Klein, who also competed on Survivor’s 2020 all-winners season, had steady income as a keynote and motivational speaker. But as that work slowed down, an uptick of people — coinciding with a COVID-era surge in Survivor’s popularity — started reaching out for casting coaching sessions. He now becomes quite busy during the summer months, booking up to eight sessions a day with reality wannabes.

His offerings include a private brainstorm and workshop running for $175; a close-read audition video review for $245; and a $575 package that includes the aforementioned services, along with more follow-up reviews and additional coaching for clients who advance to further rounds of the casting process — according to Klein, about a fifth of his mentees in 2025 advanced far enough to tap this expertise — among other resources.

Once they’re past basic cinematography components like lighting and framing, Klein focuses on content. “We talk about storytelling,” he says. “We talk about speech-giving techniques, like vocal dynamics and how to relax and feel more conversational.”

“They are more likely to talk about the show than themselves, and that will not get them on the show.”

The goal isn’t “teaching them to act like someone else,” says Jodi Wincheski, who competed on The Amazing Race in 2009 and has teamed up with Klein in the past for coaching sessions; she still refers clients to him today. “We were just saying, ‘Hey, these are the best things about your personality. This is what you've told me. These are the things that need to go in your video.’”

Wincheski is one of the few reality stars who’s made the jump from competing to casting. After her season aired, reality casting legend Lynne Spillman — who’s worked on Survivor and The Amazing Race — asked her if she’d be interested in the other side of the camera. They recently teamed up on the upcoming Fallout unscripted competition series (based on the mega-popular video-game-turned-TV-series), for which Wincheski recruited contestants.

“There’s a lot of people that just put the wrong things in their video or don't know what to put in their video,” Wincheski says. (One example she offers: An applicant says they love to travel — but fails to mention they grew up on a chicken farm and were doing chores at 5 a.m. before school.) The other challenge: “They are more likely to talk about the show than themselves,” she says, “and that will not get them on the show because we want to know who you are and what you’re bringing to the table. We don’t want to know about the show that we already know everything about.”

On the more cynical end of reality TV coaching, there is Chad Kultgen. He originally got into the biz as the co-creator of Bad Judge, a one-season legal sitcom starring Kate Walsh. Through that writers room, he met Lizzy Pace, who shared his penchant for analyzing The Bachelor.

“We started to see these repeating patterns emerge and it really became like a sport to us,” he says. “Next, we started thinking, well, if it’s a sport, can you train people to play this game and go in for the wrong reasons? Can you train people on the mathematical statistics of any given situation? Can you really break it down like a game and play it like that?”

“To dismiss reality television as a stupid guilty pleasure is a drastic misunderstanding of what it actually is.”

They turned their obsessive insights into the podcast Game of Roses and the book How to Win The Bachelor. Right after the book was released in 2022, Kultgen put out a call on their podcast to see if anybody was interested in being coached to game out The Bachelor. That’s when he received a DM from a young woman named Cassidy Timbrooks. Kultgen sifted through her Instagram and advised her on what to scrub, including pictures of her with ex-boyfriends and flipping the bird. The plan worked, kinda: Timbrooks competed for Clayton Echard’s affections on The Bachelor’s 26th season, though she was eliminated during the second week.

Still, Kultgen claims that he’s been secretly training people to infiltrate a variety of love-related reality shows and has had about 10 pupils get cast since 2022. “I don't charge any money for this,” he says. “I just literally do it because I find it fun to play against the producers of these various reality shows who think that they are in complete control of this world.”

A core tenant of his coaching is the idea that a contestant is simultaneously playing against four different bodies — the lead of the show (the titular Bachelor, or the HBIC Housewife), the other contestants, the producers, and the audience at home — and that “there are hardcore mathematical probabilities you can play to your advantage every time.” Mostly, it’s about maximizing your screen time: interacting with the lead, yes, but also understanding how a relationship or rivalry with another player can fit into the kind of story arc these shows are built on.

Kultgen is the first to admit his coaching style and motivations stem from more than just a love of the game. It’s also about decoding the “most important media format currently being made in the world.”

“To dismiss reality television as a stupid guilty pleasure is a drastic misunderstanding of what it actually is,” he says. “It is both the mirror and the reflection. It’s the thing being reflected and the thing you’re reflecting. It is so strange, the snake eating its own tail.”

The truth is, most people will not get on the reality TV show of their dreams, let alone get a first phone call from producers. If you do the math on Survivor, 36 spots out of 25,000 aspirants means your chances are less than a fraction of a percent. According to Klein, over 10% of his clients who did at least one private session for their Survivor submission received an initial callback during the casting cycle for Season 47 and 48. And since starting his business a few years ago, 11 people who played Survivor received his private casting coaching. But while these coaches are always upfront that nothing is ever certain, they also hope they can offer closure for those who aren’t chosen.

“With a lot of people, the frustration is, ‘I’ve applied all these times. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong,’” Wincheski says. “So just knowing, ‘Hey, you did it right. You put your best foot forward. Whether you get called or not is going to be based on what they need and what they’re seeing in you, but we’re going to get the very best possible submission for you.’”

“The skills that we develop are helpful in life outside of reality television.”

A lot of the benefits of hiring a reality TV coach come down to this kind of emotional support. By the time a client is going out to film a show, Klein knows them fairly well — so while his work is largely about getting someone on TV, he also offers support for what comes after you get the chance to duke it out for a cash prize. “I almost do that as much as a friend as I do in an official coaching capacity,” he says.

He’s given his number to the freaked-out parents or relatives of clients who are having a hard time with their family members going off the grid to film a show. He’s helped clients talk through all the big and small feelings that come with the exposure of television and social media — like getting stopped for photos when you’re out with your significant other, who finds themself on camera-phone duty for impromptu meet-and-greets. “Sometimes people don’t think about that and the impact on their loved ones when they're first applying,” he says. “So I work with people on all of that.”

There are other benefits, too. Reality TV coaching, in a way, is not that different from people who take improv courses to loosen up or feel more confident, even if they don’t become (or want to be) actual performers.

“I genuinely feel like the skills that we develop are helpful in life outside of reality television,” Klein says. “If you want to tell better stories at a party or in a work environment, or if you want to give better speeches, working with me — on your Survivor audition video or your Big Brother audition video or your Beast Games audition video or Squid Games or whatever — is probably going to help with that.”