Elaine Culotti Reveals Her Favorite Part Of Filming Undercover Billionaire - Exclusive

We all would love to get our hands on millions, if not billions, of dollars. Who wouldn't? The very idea of creating your own business, working toward success, and reaching the top of the mountain that we call career success sounds amazing. It is the goal that is achieved by very few, so for those of us working our normal nine to five jobs, we can thankfully tune in to shows like Undercover Billionaire and learn just what it means to create a business from the ground up.

Designer and construction queen Elaine Culotti is one of the three billionaires competing on Undercover Billionaire's second season, with the goal of creating a successful, million-dollar business in just 90 days. Sounds completely crazy, right? It sounds even crazier when you learn that each mogul only has $100 to start off with. How on earth is anyone supposed to taste success when the odds are stacked against you like that? Leave it to Culotti to teach us how. 

Culotti sat down with The List to chat about the show, her experience in front of the camera, and what aspects of the unscripted reality show stood out to her. Was her experience a positive one? Did she come out on top? What was it like navigating all of life's challenges all while being on television? Sit tight, because Elaine Culotti revealed her favorite part of filming Undercover Billionaire to The List.

Being a major part of an unscripted reality television show sounds stressful enough, let alone when you add the pressures of starting a business from the ground up. And despite her initial doubts, Elaine Culotti began to trust the process of Undercover Billionaire, and shared with The List her favorite part about her learning experience. The question that production had, according to Culotti, was where in the United States they would place her so she could start her business. Where did she end up? Fresno, California — in the middle of a pandemic, no less. 

"All of a sudden I'm just there and I'm like, 'Why did you pick here? What?'" she told The List. "But they did the right thing. They picked the right place." Culotti revealed that even though she had hesitations, it was an amazing experience to give back to a community like Fresno. The process also challenged her, for the very first time in her career, to slow down and explain her business practice to those around her. 

"Oh, it's impossible," she said. "You have momentum and you're going, and they're like, 'Wait, can you back up?' ... Because it's non-scripted reality. It's just real."

Starting a successful business must be an amazing feeling, especially to see what started as an idea and a hundred-dollar investment and have it turn into something larger than yourself. That's what we thought Elaine Culotti's biggest takeaway from Undercover Billionaire was going to be, but she told us here at The List that her favorite takeaway was far more personal. "The most important takeaway for me was the value in building a second family," she shared, highlighting the amazing crew and production who followed her journey on the show. 

Culotti shared that throughout her entire career, she never found herself leaning on employees, additional workers, or any other collaborators — it's just been her. "I have not, in my whole career, really relied on a group of people like I relied on them. And it's because I didn't have to. I've always been the one that people rely on," she shared. She later divulged to The List that until the show, she had always been the one "that has to write the checks" or "come up with the ideas." For her to rely on her team around her, Culotti shared, was such an impactful experience that she took away from the Undercover Billionaire journey.

Undercover Billionaire not only exposed Elaine Culotti to intense circumstances (there was one point where she almost slept in her car), but it also opened her eyes to some amazing life lessons. When asked how her time on the show would impact her work and career moving forward, Culotti told The List that she aims to focus on philanthropic work, mainly focusing on farming and agriculture, as it became such a huge component for her. 

"Certainly I'm going to spend a lot of time ... taking care of small farming and helping small farming with supply chain," she shared. She also told The List that she hopes to encourage people, especially in the middle-class, to buy fresh vegetables as often as they can. Currently, Culotti explained, the only people with consistent access to fresh produce are those at high-end restaurants and those who work the farms themselves. There is a huge gap in the middle, she explained, and she hopes to see that gap start to shrink. "Really, it should be less expensive and readily available to absolutely everybody," Culotti said. "We need to work on that."

Undercover Billionaire is now streaming on discovery+.