If You're Boring, You Won't Make It on Shark Tank (Or in Business)

Shark Tank has won more than its share of industry awards, including two prime-time Emmys, two Critics’ Choice Awards, a Television Critics Association Award, and umpteen nominations from every major awards show in the industry. Several reasons account for its success since its premiere show in August 2009, and one of them is the enormous amount of behind-the-scenes energy invested in each episode. Viewers have little or no idea what’s involved, which is as it should be—the mark of true professionals is their ability to conceal all the hard work and stress needed to crank out a quality product. The magic of the show grows not out of the actions of we Sharks and the deals we might haggle over. It’s fashioned by the producers, directors, analysts, and other people behind the scenes who select the pitches and stage them for maximum impact on us and on the viewers.

Start with some numbers. Each season between 40,000 and 50,000 people either apply for an audition on Shark Tank or are invited to submit information on their business venture for consideration. Many applications are rejected immediately based on the quality of the submission. Others move through a multistage selection process before being invited to make an in-person pitch to the producers. Meanwhile, Shark Tank analysts scout business media and business trade shows in search of companies with an unusual product or service and an apparent need for investment funds. Out of those thousands of people and their business dreams who apply or are selected for consideration, about 225 are invited to make their pitch. These are further winnowed down until about 150 appear on air each season.

Why don’t the others appear on your TV screen? To put it bluntly, they’re boring. They may be wonderful people, salt of the earth, and even succeed in making a deal with us, but if in the opinion of the producers they fail to seize your interest, they won’t make it into your home via your television screen. You can fix many things in television and movies, but you can’t fix boring. If you are fat, thin, bald, wrinkled, or almost any other physical situation that doesn’t play well to audiences, it can be corrected. But if you are boring, you are stuck with it, and Hollywood will move on without you.

I’m not suggesting that anyone hoping for an appearance on Shark Tank show up in a weird or scanty costume, or wear a funny hat and do a silly dance. That’s not what they need. They need to tell an interesting story in an exciting manner. The entertainment industry calls this giving value to the viewer, and that’s a good term. We invest money in the dreams of the pitchers on Shark Tank. Viewers invest an hour of their lives in watching the show, and they deserve something of value in return. Boring has little or no value anywhere.

Shark Tank producers look for businesses and people that they know will make great TV, and the most important part of this mix, by far, is the people and their situations. Entertainment of all kinds is based on those two elements, reality show or not. The business aspect is secondary. You don’t win two Emmys and numerous other awards because you have a great business show on television. You win those awards because you have an entertaining show whose subject matter is business.

That’s what is missing among the knockoff shows that have tried to cash in on the success of Shark Tank. The people behind these productions say, “Hey, let’s make a business show that will attract millions of viewers like Shark Tank.” That’s their first mistake. Shark Tank is not a business show; it’s a reality TV drama dealing with high-stakes interactions between people, and the topic happens to be business.

Dramatic situations make great television, and great television, when it occurs, is nothing less than magic. It’s like great businesses. Both have an element of magic in them, and our producers and crew create magic over and over every week we’re on the air. What you cannot do in making magic or a great business is write a can’t-miss formula to be handed out for other people to duplicate the magic. It just doesn’t happen that way. The only way to explain how Shark Tank producers achieve magic is to say they know it when they see it. That’s their gift—the talent they use to find magic—and they always begin with people and personalities.

Reality TV is character-driven, not idea- or situation-driven. You can build a show around a fascinating character, but good luck building success around a product or a business. Nothing proves this better than the success of the Kardashians. The show is all about them and what they are—outlandish, self-centered, opinionated, and a lot of other descriptions, few of them flattering. You don’t have to like the Kardashians to follow their adventures. You just have to be sufficiently fascinated by them.

We want to be fascinated by the people who appear on Shark Tank looking for investment funding. Anyone who comes into the studio brimming with high energy, confidence, and determination changes the tone of the room immediately. We become excited, we begin asking questions, we give and receive feedback, and somewhere along the line we become interested in the business side of their story. That’s what pulls viewers back to the show week after week. They know us and the way we respond to different situations. It’s the unique and surprising personalities of the pitchers, and the chemistry that erupts between them and us, that make great television.

Does this sound simple? It’s not, and the statistics prove it.

Every year the TV networks “green light” about a hundred shows, meaning they get approved for development. Out of these about fifteen are actually produced—scripts are written, characters or participants are cast, studios are booked and decorated, and an actual episode is ready for viewing. Viewers never see most of these produced shows because only about three are aired and few of these survive their first season.

The magic behind the show’s success starts with the selection of pitchers and relies on many things other than the appeal of the pitchers themselves. Once they have appeared and the episode has been recorded, the next most important bit of magic is the editing. Viewers at home watch each pitch spin out, from start to finish, over about seven or eight minutes. Things move along quickly—the pitchers do their spiel, the Sharks push for details and either make an offer or bow out, and it all ends with either a handshake or a slow walk by the pitchers out of the studio.

The average encounter with pitchers lasts a full hour—sixty minutes of back-and-forth chatter, bickering, cajoling, and deciding. Even the shortest encounter took thirty-five minutes.

That’s what the audience sees, but it’s not all that happens. The average encounter with pitchers lasts a full hour—sixty minutes of back-and-forth chatter, bickering, cajoling, and deciding. Even the shortest encounter took thirty-five minutes. The longest was two and a half hours—longer than a Hollywood feature film. Being able to reduce these mini-marathons to the length of a coffee break while keeping the story line together is another measure of magic that contributes to the show’s popularity.

Finally, there’s a side to the magic element of the show that says something about the greatness of America. When you set aside the cameras and the promotion and the glitz and Emmys, the show is really about us—meaning you and me and every American who harbors a dream. Some of us have achieved that dream, or enough of it that we have satisfied much of our ambition. Others are working at theirs, and knowing the odds against them appearing on the show, let alone walking away with the investment funds they were seeking, they make the effort and keep their dreams alive.

The impact this has on me and the other Sharks is enormous. We may sit there weighing the pros and cons of the pitches we hear and deciding to walk away without handing over a penny if we choose. We all enjoy our success, both the emotional satisfaction it brings us and the material benefits we have earned. We don’t have to wake up every morning worrying if we will make the rent payment that day, and we don’t have to dream about what it’s like to drive a Ferrari or slip into a sable coat because one (or more) is in our garage or closet. So you may expect that a large part of us wants every thing to be constant and unchanging. We don’t have to keep that sales curve rising like a hockey stick, right?

Wrong. We do. One of the most popular principles to be followed by independent businesspeople is to accept that there is no constant, no point at which you say, “I guess I can back off the throttle and coast for a while.” Well, you can’t. In business you either grow fast or die slowly. 

The people who make the cut and appear in front of us to pitch their offer, baring their souls (or at least their dreams) to us, are not interested in coasting. We were once them, and they want to be us, and witnessing their drive to succeed motivates me and the other Sharks.

We were once them, and they want to be us, and witnessing their drive to succeed motivates me and the other Sharks.

Not all of them will succeed, of course. Life doesn’t work that way. But the show demonstrates that you can be somebody in this country without being an athlete or a movie star. Nobody else in the world has the same opportunity to crave success against overwhelming odds as Americans. The belief that you can make anything you want of your life is so classically American that it defines the country. 

My participation on Shark Tank has opened my eyes to another side to that story, and it’s all about second chances and transformations. No people in the world love a comeback story more than Americans, and it doesn’t have to be related to sports. An untold number of businesses, and the people who created them, have made it onto Shark Tank having almost touched success at one point, only to see it slip from their grasp, often due to bad luck. They’re down but not out, and if we encounter these people, recognize their potential, and see a chance to help both of us, we tend to jump aboard.

All of us on the show have favorite stories that illustrate this approach. Mine involves a great husband-and-wife team, Hanna and Mark Lim. The parents of young children, they had developed a child’s drinking cup that was far superior to existing designs. Their Lollacup made it much easier for a child to drink liquids without spilling them and much easier for parents to clean all of its parts. Hanna and Mark went a step further by insisting that their products be manufactured in the United States or Germany to ensure that they were free of materials deemed harmful to children.

Their company began growing steadily until Hanna became seriously ill. It took a year for her to fully recover and resume building the firm, but sales and production had slipped badly in that time—so badly that some people would have cut their losses and looked for steady employment elsewhere. Mark Cuban and I both recognized the brilliant design and superb execution of their product, along with Hanna and Mark’s determination. That’s what sold us on them. With the funds we invested in the company, the Lims grew from assembling the products part-time in their garage to setting up a full assembly line in a modern warehouse. They also expanded their dealer network from about fifty stores doing $40,000 worth of sales to nationwide distribution achieving millions of dollars in sales.

Most people believe we Sharks go through all those hours of listening to pitches and making investment decisions strictly for the profit we hope to earn. I would be a fool to say that’s not correct. But I would also be wrong to say that it’s the only thing that motivates us. 

Stories like the Lims’ reinforce our belief in the opportunity to succeed that distinguishes America. It reminds viewers of just how fortunate they are to be here, and perhaps will inspire more than a handful to take advantage of their good fortune.

*****

You Don’t Have to Be a Shark is available everywhere books are sold May 17, 2016. Learn more.