Mindy Zemrak has seen almost every invention on the market, but she’s not an investor or an entrepreneur.
The 36-year-old has worked as the Supervising Casting Producer on the ABC hit show “Shark Tank” for eleven years, helping entrepreneurs pitch their products to Kevin O’Leary, Barbara Corcoran, Daymond John, Robert Herjavec, Lori Greiner and Mark Cuban.
“None of us have business backgrounds,” Zemrak said of herself and her team. “When I started on ‘Shark Tank’ I didn’t even know what equity was. So I’ve learned a lot since then and I can spit a little business game if you will with entrepreneurs which they can appreciate because we lose credibility if we don’t know what we’re talking about [when meeting potential contestants].”
Zemrak and her team of five casting associates travel across the country in search of the best ideas to feature.
As for how to get discovered, Zemrak often announces in-person and online casting calls via social media.
“It’s a level playing field whether you apply online or you go to an open call,” she told us. “Open call we see everyone that shows up. And e-mails take a little more time to get through because they’ve been stacking up since the middle of last year. But we do get through all of that.”
Zemrak explained that casting calls can either happen at small business expos or at large convention center-like venues. Participants get a minute to pitch themselves. They do get additional time to demo their product, or set up any props they brought with them. Sometimes casting producers will have follow up questions, but a contestant is only with them for a total of about five to ten minutes.
“In the morning when you get to the open call we hand out wristbands usually around 9:00 a.m. and it never fails because we usually will show up at like 8:00 and we can get a gauge for like, ‘Okay. Is this gonna be a massive turnout? Is it gonna be kind of on the smaller side?’ But then within that hour that line will grow double, triple and then you get outside … In Vegas we saw over 400 pitches. That’s like 800 people. Because everyone mostly has someone else with them. So we go through a lot. And it’s all in one day.”
But that’s not the biggest turnout she’s ever experienced.
“About four or five years ago we were in Miami and we brought 500 wristbands and we ran out,” she explained. “And we actually ended up seeing 753 pitches that day which was about probably 13 to 14 hundred people … We did an open call in Atlanta last year on a Sunday and we interviewed past midnight because you want to give these people time.”
Her team also finds candidates on their own through online research.
“We have a couple casting producers who do a little more research and outreach to companies if they find an article or Kickstarter, IndieGoGo campaign or something like that,” she explained.
“A lot of people think that going onto ‘Shark Tank’ is they apply and then they work on their pitch and then they go in the tank and that’s totally not the case. There’s months of work, months of preparation. We have to run background checks and patent checks and we do entity searches. So we do a lot of due diligence on our end to make sure that what they’re saying is factual and correct so that they’re not misleading the sharks or gonna go on air and say something that’s incorrect. A lot of people don’t realize the depth of what we do as a show, but we need to make sure that everyone has their ducks in a row and we’re not putting anyone in a bad light or anything like that.”
As for who gets in front of the sharks, not everyone makes it into the tank on their first try.
“I tell everyone — because we’ve had people apply for the show like three or four years in a row — I tell them it’s all about timing,” Zemrak said. “Slawsa — she was on a couple of years ago. It was like this coleslaw mixed with mustard, it was like this condiment. And I remember she applied three or four years in a row and it finally worked out. And a lot of entrepreneurs say, ‘I’m glad I didn’t come on the year before because I wasn’t ready. Now I am. So it’s really cool to see them kind of be like, ‘Oh yeah. No I thought I was ready then but I clearly wasn’t!'”
She also keeps in touch with many of the show’s past contestants, joking with us: “I keep in touch with Cousins Maine Lobster, Jim and Sabin. They’re also from Maine which is where I’m from. And I love lobster.”
Now, Zemrak is on her hardest season yet.
“Every year the bar is raised but that just speaks volumes to the entrepreneurs out there that are still creating and still getting things up and running and it’s also a testament to our casting team because they’re the ones who help find them and spitball to producers really quickly and I think a lot of it has to do with entrepreneurs. They just keep stepping up their game and there there’s no stopping that train.
“‘Shark Tank’ is really unique and special because you’re really helping entrepreneurs get to the next step whatever that next step is. Obviously, it’s a very small amount that get on the show but having a tiny little piece of helping them move forward and whether they get a deal or not, if they end up airing, it’s really great to be a part of.”