BEHIND THE SCENES Of Shark Tank During COVID | Kevin O'Leary

I'm um in Las Vegas somewhere in quarantine getting ready to shoot Shark Tank, in the bubble, as they say. [Music] So anyways, I'm um in Las Vegas somewhere in quarantine somewhere and, uh, getting ready to shoot Shark Tank real soon in the bubble, as they say.

So I'm sitting in my hotel room as I have been, getting tested every 36 hours. Going a little crazy. Beautiful hotel room, like beautiful but still a prison. Give a little tour of my um, um my little prison here. It's a broadcast studio really. You can see all these cameras. You can actually broadcast them here; it's very cool. You see all that? It's uh, yeah, it's nice, you know. It's I can't go anywhere.

Shark Tank starts season 12, crazy. We're all here somewhere in Las Vegas, maybe Henderson, you know like around and um, in the bubble baby, in the bubble.

So once they're done, can they leave? Yeah, yeah, I mean, they have flights and stuff, so they'll be traveled out, but they're leaving really quickly out there. So this will be their stage.

Wow! Wow, talk about social distances. Hi there! Amazing. Yeah, so there, so Jillian and their team will be able to grab an entrepreneur and then, uh, meet with, uh, Kenji for anybody else that needs to talk to them right outside the store, right? Great.

Oh, it's the think tank. Yeah, yeah, I mean, everything else is crazy, but the set looks good. They're all spread out, but the circle doesn't look too spread out. It looks pretty good. Circle gets a square. Does it look on the camera like it's wider?

It doesn't. It actually looks like it's closer. Really? It looks incredible! You guys did an amazing job! The setup for this, you're going to end up using more tight shots, basically. Did the launcher of all this. It looks good though! Yeah, very incredible.

Hey everyone, Mindy Zemrak, I'm the head of casting for Shark Tank. We are here in Las Vegas at the Venetian filming season 12. So thankful to the Venetian and their entire team, crew, staff, everyone. Our production, without this, we probably wouldn't be filming.

Um, so some things that you're going to see different this year is something that is required. We're all required to wear masks and PPE. So at all times, we have to have a mask on. The entrepreneurs take their mask off right before they enter the tank, and then as soon as they're exiting the tank, they're given their mask to put back on.

All of the sharks have to put on some sort of mask as well, either the ones that are around their neck or they have to hold it. Some things that are different this year that you're gonna see is that the sharks are all sitting six and a half feet apart for social distancing.

Um, and the entrepreneurs who typically are 13 feet behind away from the sharks are now 21 feet. The other thing that you're going to see is there's going to be not as many handouts to the sharks or any because, for safety reasons, everything is preset by our art department.

Um, and then there's also no, uh, like celebratory congratulations or, you know, anywhere near the sharks. So if someone makes a deal with a shark, then they can air high-five them, but the sharks can't come close and they can't go close to the sharks. So we're taking every precaution.

We're all tested anywhere from three to five, three day every three days, or every four days, or every five days depending on what zone you're in. Um, so everyone here is very, very protective.

So I'm gonna get po, go ahead and put my mask back on. But yeah, that's just a couple differences of this season. [Music]

So [Music] I will not be any closer to you. Get away from me! CDC recommends social distancing, six feet away from each other. Right now, if work dictates that you have to work close together, that is totally fine, but please do so at a minimum time, okay? No longer than 10 minutes separate, okay?

Of course, we're wearing face masks; you see everybody's my face mask. Work dictates, if you don't wear face masks, that's totally fine! You have the mask. Let's see, you have the face shields to block anything that's coming around you, all right?

Sanitizing, if at all possible, please wear gloves. You can see people are wearing gloves. Make sure you're washing your hands; there's a lot of surfaces that are around here. If you catch yourself leaning on those surfaces, when you wash your hands, the next time you wash your hands, make sure you're getting those forearms and elbows, okay? Because we just don't pay attention.

[Music] Mindy Castain, I feel like you traveled the world. Were you in Cambodia yesterday?

Okay, yes! Listen, I happen to know Lori is teeming with death; she's teaming with death. We are six to eight feet apart. I don't know; I'm really sad because I can't mess with him. Retail's down as much as 50 in terms of foot traffic.

So know what you have to do. You have to pivot to digital. You have to set up a website; you have to sell direct to your customer base. That involves understanding how to produce a great 59-second video, lots of terrific photographs of your product or service, and the ability to understand which digital platform to buy ads on.

Personally, I recommend Facebook geo-locked ads so you can test the region, see if your message works, and then expand nationally. But it's all about direct, baby! Direct, direct, direct! You know why? You love that 100 percent margin as opposed to paying for retail distribution, which can be as much as 50-50 of your profits out the window.

Go direct! Avoid the problems that COVID is putting into distribution and retail. [Applause]

Premier, uh, listen, uh I can't thank you guys enough. You should all be proud of what we've accomplished. Again, we're not done yet, but I know at the end of the day we're not gonna be able to do this because we're always like we gotta finish.

But, um, I wanna say, you know, on behalf of myself and you, MGM, Mark Burnett, the team, Sony, ABC, everybody is so grateful. You guys, I'm proud of this accomplishment, truly! I mean, it's amazing.

Um, can't, don't have time to thank everybody, but I did want to say thank you to everyone. I mean every person here. The only reason we got through this is because everybody joined in together, right?

We all followed the protocols; everybody did it. We always talk about the Shark Tank family; you really saw it during this experience today. So thank you, everybody!

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