A Ghost on ABC’s Shark Tank

I was sitting outside in the sunshine at a trendy restaurant on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles interviewing the executive producer on Shark Tank, which was in the middle of its second season, for a client’s book. He was telling me about one amazing entrepreneur after the next who had been on the show. I have to admit that I felt somewhat “less than” as I listened to his tales of Congressional aides creating barbeque sauce, a woman who invented a self-cleaning litter box for cats, and so on. What didI do for a living? Nothing that interesting. “Let me ask you a question,” said the executive producer, a man named Brien Meagher. “Have you ever thought about appearing on our show?”

I looked over at my assistant, who was sitting in and listening, to make sure I had heard him correctly. His question knocked me speechless.

“But there’s nothing sexy about my business,” I protested, when I could finally find my voice again. “It’s just me in a room, typing.”

He shook his head.

“I disagree completely,” he said. “I think your business is very sexy. I would like you to apply for the show.”

Back then, as Season Three began, more than 30,000 entrepreneurs applied to be on Shark Tank. Of those 30,000, only about 110 were invited to come to Los Angeles to tape segments with the Sharks. Of those roughly 110 segments, only about 35made it to air. So, if you were an entrepreneur and you appeared on Shark Tank Season Three, you overcame odds of 1,000 to one.

Unless you were me.

If the executive producer of a show wants you on a show, guess what, kids? You’re getting on the show. So I did all the things that were asked of me. I shot a video explaining who I was and what my business was about. I talked to my business friends to determine how much to ask for. I passed each test (no surprise since the wheels were greased). I worked on my opening pitch with the line producer I had been assigned until we had it polished to a high sheen. And then, the fateful day arrived.

“You’re going to tape,” he said. “Congratulations!”

The entire years’ worth of segments with entrepreneurs are taped over on Labor Day weekend. The Sharks know nothing about you prior to your coming on the air. When you see them writing down how much you’re asking for and what your business is worth, that’s the first time they’ve ever heard anything about you. So, if you’ve ever wondered whether the show is real or not, trust me, it’s real.

The Sharks are not bound by deals they make because they can perform their due diligence after they’ve hugged it out with you in the tank. The show is as real as real could be. The night before I taped, they put me up in a hotel inWest Los Angeles not far from the Sony lot. I took a van to the studio with my props and with a few other contestants. My line producer had me stand outside the studio and shout out my memorized opening pitch several times at the top of my lungs, to do a final rehearsal, and then to get rid of any butterflies. That was a very strange experience – yelling that I’m a ghostwriter outside a soundstage at Sony Studios. Definitely a one-of-a-kind moment.

And then it was time. I walked down the corridor the same way you see the contestants enter on the show. I felt as if I’d been somehow miniaturized sufficiently so that I could fit inside my television set. I got to the carpet where the entrepreneurs stand, and then I had to stand there for about a minute and a half. It’s awkward. You’re looking at the Sharks and theSharks are looking at you, but nothing happens until the camera people say they are ready. So I just stood there and smiled, and they smiled at me, and then I got the go-ahead. I made my pitch.

Truth be told, it just wasn’t their kind of business. I’m not a fireman with a new kind of nozzle for fire hoses, or a Breathometer that attaches to your iPhone. I knew that going in, but the opportunity to go on the show was too exciting to pass up. So I stood there, made my presentation confidently, and then the floor was open. They all shouted questions at once, and it reminded me of Moot Court in law school, where judges and lawyers come in and pretend they are an appellate court, peppering you with questions as you try to make your case.

I had done all the homework I could on the Sharks, reading about their interests, reading about the books they had purportedly written, and otherwise getting to know them. They were actually friendly and respectful. I had no idea how brutal the Sharks could be to entrepreneurs who came in with a line of blarney and no track record with sales.

The short of it is that none of them invested, which makes sense because my business was not scalable in the way a Shark Tank business must be. I hadn’t come up with a breakthrough idea for women’s gym clothing. I was a guy who wrote books. One Shark, Robert Herjavec, paid me a great compliment on national television. “You’ve done what practically no writer has ever done. You figured out how to make a business, and a very successful business, about writing.”

For me, that was the most valuable takeaway from the whole experience. Yes, the phone rang a lot after the show aired. Yes, it became a significant part of my marketing, since I was the ghostwriter you saw on Shark Tank, and it gave me the experience and credibility to sell my business. But the compliment mattered to me, because until then, I had felt that slight level of shame about the fact that I hadn’t “made it” as a novelist, which had always been my dream.

I sold the first three novels I ever wrote to Simon & Schuster and could never come to terms on a fourth, although I sold several other novels a few years later. The real dream was to sit poolside somewhere, tossing off novel after novel, and making crazy sums of money. Since that hadn’t happened, the writing classes, and then the coaching and ghostwriting I offered, felt like a fallback or almost an admission of failure. I felt as if I was taking in washing. So to suddenly get the stamp of approval from these wealthy, successful entrepreneurs, and to receive it on national television, changed the way I saw myself. Suddenly, I wasn’t a failed novelist; I was a successful entrepreneur. I could take pride in what I had accomplished. That was truly a life-changing moment for me.