The Los Angeles Times did a profile recently of gleefully greedy investor Kevin
O’Leary of ABC’s popular business pitch show Shark Tank. Sarcastically dubbed “Mr. Wonderful,” he is the
sharp-tongued dealmaker that audiences love to hate, the show’s “Wicked Witch
of the West,” as one TV producer put it. His brutal honesty and cold put-downs (“You
are a nothing-burger”) make O’Leary stand out as the Simon Cowell among the panel
of other self-made multimillionaires. Too bad the LA Times didn’t look past the ratings-grabbing arrogance and
profile a more exemplary co-star – O’Leary’s polar opposite, Canadian software
king and nice-guy-who-finished-first, Robert Herjavec.
Robert is the elegant gentleman Shark, whose “brilliant blue eyes and expressive features seem
particularly adept at telegraphing sympathy,” as one interviewer perfectly phrased it. Where Mr. Wonderful might dismiss a
wannabe entrepreneur on the show with a curt “You’re dead to me,” Robert often delivers
his honest assessment of a pitch – and even his rejection of it – with a
compliment and encouragement rather than an insult. “Because of my mom, I
learned never to be rude,” he says,
exhibiting a politeness and respectfulness that sadly seem quaint in the
attitude-filled world of reality TV.
The son of Croatian immigrants who arrived in Canada with just $20 when he was 8
years old, Robert once got emotional on the show – even choking up other sharks
as well – when he referred to his now-deceased father’s quiet struggle to make
ends meet for his family in the New World. His father hated living under
Communist oppression in dictator Tito’s Yugoslavia, was repeatedly jailed for
speaking out against it, and just wanted his only son to grow up free.
By 1990 he had risen
to found an internet security software company, which he sold to AT&T
Canada in 2000 for somewhere in the $30-100 million range (the figure is
disputed). He subsequently became VP of Sales at a company that was soon
acquired by Nokia for $127 million, and then in 2003, he founded and became the
CEO of The Herjavec Group, a security software integrator and reseller. He went
on to star in The Dragon’s Den, a
Canadian predecessor to Shark Tank, and
then in the America version, in which he has appeared since its premiere in
2009.
Asked by an interviewer whether his celebrity status
has led to strangers bothering him, Robert replied, “I always take time
to talk to people. I always spend time with folks because I remember what it
was like on the other side when I was a nobody and nobody would talk to me or
spend any time with me. I find the entire process incredibly humbling.” Difficult to imagine O’Leary copping to a
quality like humility.
Corny as it may
sound (funny how corniness so often applies to basic, enduring truths), Robert
credits his massive success to simple perseverance: “I’ve never been the
smartest guy; I’ve never been the tallest guy, the best looking guy, the
fastest guy. But man, when I get knocked down, I just get up again.” That quality paid off. When his
father saw his rags-to-riches son’s 50,000 square-foot mansion, he said, “I was
shocked that something like this exists and my son made it.”
Kevin O’Leary’s
love affair with money puts Wall Street’s
Gordon “Greed is Good” Gecko to shame. By contrast, Herjavec says “money
is good,” but “it’s never about the money for me. It’s always about constant
improvement. It never stops. You can always do more. You can always be better.”
“And that’s the beauty of life.”
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/9/13)