reminded me to note, Omarosa's advantage with Trump was that she was the first and one of the few rare candidates to identify herself as within Trump's self-image, not his public image or his more realistic image, but the unstoppable juggernaut of a businessman and brand he imagines himself to be, and that the key way to doing that was not blindly sucking up or praising Trump, but ruthlessly attacking everyone else as inferior, blaming them for all your problems and then telling Trump you refuse to be weak like the others want because you're too determined to win, just like Trump
arguably a form of this is what the Joan Rivers-Annie Duke season hinged upon is that they both had figured this out and were playing the opposite sides of it...Marlee Matlin also seemed to identify this and let others get mowed down by Trump rather than the natural inclination to "correct" the record from Trump's imaginary versions, something a few candidates like Meat Loaf and Lou Ferrigno could never comprehend
after the seasons they did, Penn Jillette, Adam Carolla, Arsenio Hall, and Dee Snider all openly discussed on the first twos podcasts that the key was how quickly they recognized nothing but managing Trump's moods mattered and you had to realize when they'd suddenly shift gears and how to tell him "no" in a way that Trump found acceptable, something Adam and Dee were not willing to do, while Penn and Arsenio were willing to find the thinnest compromise they could...Lil Jon and La Toya Jackson also seemed to imply they had figured this out over their two seasons, Lil Jon particularly seemed adept at leveraging his actual abilities against what was likely an accurate read on Trump's perception of him...
I'd suggest Dennis Rodman did the same, but arguably that was also his late NBA mindset as well and a subset of his rebounding skill, on the show he always seemed aware of when and where he needed to suddenly participate actively in a task or lead it after lowering everyones expectations by doing nothing else earlier that he could exploit minimum energy by pre-positioning himself for the rebound...er task suited to his skills
also, Rodman of all people seemed to understand the "client's interests comes first" rule best among most of the candidates on really all versions of the show Alan Sugar's included, often probably because it was also the path of least resistance, just do what they say
(Bret Michaels was hit or miss about this but it's arguably why he won too...Lil Jon was pretty good at this whenever he was a team lead)
the one episode he literally saved the team just by being the only person that season to ask the client what kind of advertisement or whatever they'd like to see, and it turned out they had basically a ready concept that the team could just copy and polish, while usually the teams would blow off the meetings and execute whatever they came up with (and initially Rodman's team looked at him like "there goes Dennis again wasting our time" and Ivanka later pointed out to the embarrassment of everyone else that constantly drunk/hungover Dennis was the only one yet that season to ever bother asking the client what they might want
)