Sharks (from left) Lori Greiner, Daymond John, Robert Herjavec, Mark Cuban, Kevin O'Leary, and Barbara Corcoran in a photo composite shot on Jan. 29 and Feb. 1(Photo; Brian Doben for Parade; Hair and Makeup: Linsdey Williams using Amika Hair and FACE Atelier Cosmetics (Lori, Robert and Daymond); Maggie Connolly using Oribe Hair and Nars Makeup (Barbara, Mark and Kevin); Wardrobe Styling: Monica Cotto. Cover image is a composite courtesy of the Happy Pixel Project.)Want to see a true Sharknado in action? Unleash the business tycoons from the hit ABC show Shark Tank in a Brooklyn loft and watch the nuttiness unfold. Daymond John is giddily riding an inflatable great white and Robert Herjavec is cracking jokes, telling Lori Greiner after she compliments his physique in swim trunks, “I’m the guy on the show that really hot girls email and say, ‘You remind me of my dad!’”Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran try to loosen up a stiff Kevin O’Leary: Cuban ambles up behind him and starts operating his arms like a puppet, while the bawdy Corcoran whips up a raunchy song to try and get the man—ironically known to Shark Tank viewers as Mr. Wonderful—to crack a smile. Finally, inspiration strikes. “Does anyone have a broom for Barbara?” asks O’Leary, who has been joking on air for years that his fellow Shark requires a particularly witchy mode of transportation. Voilà! One is located and Corcoran gamely hops on, prompting O’Leary, at long last, to unveil his biggest grin of the day. “He loves that stupid joke!” Corcoran shrieks.In other words, you can take the Sharks out of their tank, but they’ll never lose their bite. Over five seasons, these six multimillionaires and billionaires have turned Shark Tank into a runaway reality hit. The show, on which entrepreneurs enter the “tank” (at Sony Pictures studios in Culver City, Calif.) and try to convince the “Sharks” to invest in their fledgling companies, hit its highest rating yet in January, drawing 8.2 million viewers.Shark Tank repeats have been a ratings bonanza for CNBC as well this year. In short, the country hasn’t been this shark-obsessed since Jaws. “It’s what America stands for. Everybody’s got a dream,” says executive producer Mark Burnett, who also oversees Survivor and The Voice. Sony Pictures Television produces the show and adapted it from the Japanese-based reality format known in most countries as Dragons’ Den. “It says a lot about the psyche of our culture: Crazy things are possible, even in a down economy,” adds Amy Cosper, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine. “Entrepreneurs see things that others don’t.”The Sharks reveal the worst product pitches they’ve ever heard on this exclusive video. Go to parade.com/sharks Sunday and Monday for new videos!Still, it took several years for Shark Tank to really hook viewers. When the show debuted in August 2009, only 4 million tuned in. But the audience has steadily grown each season, which Corcoran attributes to the show’s season three move to Fridays, traditionally a night with low TV viewership. She thought it would be “a death knell,” but to her surprise, “that’s when we started dragging the kids in. The kids dragged in their parents. The parents dragged in the grandparents and cousins.” Says inventor Rick Hopper, who in season three convinced Greiner to invest in ReadeRest, his magnetic eyewear holder, “Families can argue over the validity of a product or say, ‘That guy was a terrible presenter,’ and ‘That Shark is mean.’ Everybody identifies with something different.”Al "Bubba" Baker's ribs hooked Daymond John, who says they "could be the biggest deal I've ever done." (Michael Ansell/ABC)And it’s not just the show that’s a TV phenomenon. Many of the products featured have become overnight sensations. The power ofShark Tank became evident in the show’s second season, when 75,000 viewers went to Kim Nelson’s Daisy Cakes website during the show, crashing it in eight minutes while trying to order her homemade baked goods. “The exposure is phenomenal,” says Hopper. “Leading up to the show, in my first six months of business, I did $65,000. Here we are, two years after, and we’ve done $8 million in sales.”For many contestants, the show has been a lifeline. Nate Holzapfel quit his job, sunk $90,000 into the company he cofounded, and was selling the Mission Belt (a belt that needs no holes) door to door when he appeared on season four. The $50,000 deal he made with John meant he could stop subsisting on peanut butter and jelly. Season five has seen 16-year-old Henry Miller pitching the Sharks on Henry’s Humdingers (raw honey with spices added), a business his family mortgaged their farm in Deming, Wash., to support. Herjavec and Cuban’s offer of $300,000 is allowing Henry to repay his parents’ $150,000 loan. And season three’s Billy Blanks Jr. (son of Tae Bo workout creator Billy Blanks) says he was “at the end of my rope” before presenting his fitness program Dance With Me on Shark Tank. “My wife and I put everything we had into it,” he recalls, having acknowledged on the show that he wasn’t being bankrolled by his dad (“He’s making me earn it”). He initially turned down John and Cuban’s offer, until John left the tank (the only time he’s done so) and urged him to reconsider. “He didn’t understand the opportunity we were giving him,” says John. The Sharks’ $100,000 investment not only enabled Blanks to get his power turned back on but to expand Dance It Out (as it’s now called) to 2,200 instructors worldwide, with a family fitness book on the way. “It’s absolutely changed our lives,” says Blanks. No wonder, then, that 35,000 entrepreneurs applied this season (both online and via nationwide casting calls) for their shot in the tank, up from just 1,000 applicants in season one. Of those, only 157 were selected to pitch the Sharks, and 112 of those pitches will air over this season’s 28 episodes.Because of the Sharks’ busy schedules, producers cram an entire season’s worth of filming into a mere 17 shooting days in July and September. (Five of the six Sharks appear in each episode, with Corcoran, John, Greiner, and Herjavec taking turns sitting out.) They hear around 10 pitches per day, with most lasting about an hour, though they can take anywhere from 20 minutes (“for dumb stuff,” says Cuban) to two hours (the Plate Topper food storage device in season four, the show’s longest pitch to date). Those sessions are edited down to roughly 10 minutes of airtime.Barbara Corcoran loved Kim Nelson's Daisy Cakes. (Adam Taylor/ABC)For the entrepreneurs, it’s do or die. “This is a one-take deal,” says ReadeRest’s Hopper, who adds that he “almost passed out” from nerves. “You’re fighting for the life of your business. The producers don’t give you any coaching. It’s the most stressful environment I’ve experienced.”Meanwhile, the Sharks have no idea what’s in store. “We don’t know anything about the person in front of us,” says John. Adds Cuban, “We can’t use computers. We can’t do a quick search.” Instead, they’re left to scribble the pertinent pitch details on their notepads—if they can remember them. “My notes are always the same,” says Corcoran. “I have the numbers, and then the note under it to Robert or whoever is sitting next to me: ‘Hey, what were the numbers?’?” Explains Herjavec, “You’re trying to figure out what to offer and not miss the information, because if you miss something and another Shark snaps on it, it’s too late.”The Sharks all say they’re open to whatever deals might come their way, no matter the price, so bidding can get fierce. “It’s not like going into a casino and saying, ‘I’m only going to spend $1,000,’?” says Greiner. “If I see great stuff, I’m excited, and I’m going to be in the game.” But the Sharks don’t let hurt feelings carry over to the next pitch, or to any of their existing partnerships. “We’ve become really good at compartmentalizing,” says Herjavec. “Just because you get run over on one deal by someone, they may be the right partner on the next one.” That said, some long-simmering tensions do bubble up during an episode airing next month, in which Corcoran takes the male Sharks to task for not giving women entrepreneurs the same shake as the men. “Well, unless they’re beautiful, and then they get an extra shake or two from the guys, let me tell you,” says Corcoran. Counters O’Leary, “She’s full of it. I invest in a lot of woman-run deals, because they make me money. Women are good entrepreneurs and good at executing.”As filming drags on, the Sharks get “punch-drunk,” says Cuban, led by O’Leary, who “gets the giggles more than anybody. They used to call him Mr. Giggles!” Explains O’Leary, “I can’t help it. I’m dead tired and the guy in front of me is absolutely nuts.” That’s one reason why “you don’t ever want to be the entrepreneur at the end of the day,” Corcoran cautions. “They never get bought!”When a deal is made on air, it’s still a long way from becoming a reality. All agreements undergo a rigorous vetting by the respective Shark’s legal team. “About 60 or 70 percent of my deals fell through in the first season,” says John. “Now only about 15 percent of them do.” The quality of pitches has gone up, and the show’s producers have become savvier about navigating potential red flags during the application process. Of course, sometimes the entrepreneurs themselves get cold feet. “Going on Shark Tank is like being in Vegas,” says Herjavec. “Sometimes they wake up the next day and say, ‘Did I really do that?’?”After the deals close, the real work begins for the Sharks. “Filming is the easiest part,” says Cuban. “The hardest part is that you actually have to have a connection and help these companies.” Corcoran estimates she spends “60 to 70 hours a week” with her entrepreneurs; others, like Cuban, John, and O’Leary, assign the deals to a member of their respective teams and check in when needed. But all are focused on turning a profit. “The Sharks are on a TV show, but their main priority is making money,” says Burnett. “Some of these businesses can make them millions and millions.”Their involvement goes far beyond just getting the companies launched. As Daisy Cakes—the Pauline, S.C., bakery Corcoran invested in during season two—stumbled in the past year (quality declined when owner Kim Nelson switched the baking to out-of-state facilities), Corcoran put her foot down. “She said, ‘There’s only one answer, and that’s to take the cakes back to Pauline,’?” Nelson says. “?‘You and your mother make them. Make as many as you can and fill the orders as you can.’ It was the right decision.”Lori Greiner tested Charles Yim's Breathometer, a breathalyzer that plugs into smartphones, in which five Sharks invested. (Kelsey McNeal/ABC)Stories like that have helped the Sharks change the country’s perception of business moguls, who have long been equated with the toxic likes of Wall Street’s Gordon “Greed Is Good” Gekko. “We’re entrepreneurs helping fledgling businesspeople,” says Greiner. Adds Herjavec, “Shark Tank shows you don’t have to be a jerk to be successful.”Well, except perhaps for Mr. Wonderful, whom viewers love to hate for bluntly eviscerating many inventors’ dreams. When O’Leary was first recognized—in an airport bathroom during season three—“we got in a big argument about something the guy had seen the night before,” he says. The fellow traveler used a choice epithet and told the Shark, “You took their soul away!” But O’Leary insists, “I’m not mean. I’m telling you the truth every time. It may not be your truth, but it is the truth that matters.”Even when they’re out of the tank, the Sharks find themselves besieged with pitches. “Every two seconds, someone’s coming up,” says Cuban. Recalls Corcoran, “I was with my son celebrating his 19th birthday in a restaurant and a woman interrupted me in the middle of singing. ‘Do you have a minute?’ I’m like, ‘No!’?”Now that Shark Tank has become a hit, Burnett says he won’t be tinkering with its formula going forward. “It’s like imagining a sports team that’s winning the championship,” he says. “The last thing you’d do is change the formations.” Which means that the biggest changes ahead lie in the viewers themselves. “This is a wide audience of Americans who want to improve their lives,” says Burnett. “We’ll never know how many people out there have started something as a result of watching Shark Tank. And that’s great.”Parade Magazine Sunday March 16, 2014