Robert Herjavec: Security is a business, and a business has to sell.

In Coulee Tech's early years, Rod watched Shark Tank and thought how much he would love to talk with the people on that stage and pitch them his ideas. Then he did get to talk with Robert Herjavec, and the conversation turned out to be about something bigger than the TV show.

Hearing Herjavec's business story up close, with the ups and the downs, made one thing clear to Rod. Shark Tank was the smallest part of his journey. And Herjavec is the one person on this page who works in Rod's own field.

What Herjavec built

Herjavec was born in Yugoslavia (now Croatia) and was eight when his family left for Canada in 1970. By his own account they landed in Halifax with $20. In Toronto they spent a year and a half living in a family friend's basement.

His early jobs were not glamorous. He waited tables, delivered newspapers, worked retail and collected debts. He also spent time in film as a third assistant director in the mid-1980s. Then he talked his way into a technology job at a company that sold IBM mainframe emulation boards, reportedly by offering to work for free for six months. He waited tables at night to pay the rent while he proved himself.

After he left that company, he started BRAK Systems in 1990 from the basement of his home. In March 2000 he sold it to AT&T Canada for about $30 million. In 2003 he started the Herjavec Group with three employees and roughly $400,000 in sales. It grew to about $200 million in annual revenue and became one of the larger independent cybersecurity firms. In 2021 it announced a merger with Fishtech Group, and the combined company launched as Cyderes in 2022.

Along the way he was a Dragon on CBC's Dragons' Den before joining Shark Tank. He has also talked publicly about the hard stretch after his marriage ended, including depression, and about leaning on his faith and the people around him.

What Rod heard

Herjavec tells audiences that selling is the skill that separates people who have a good idea from people who build a company. He speaks about hustle, about outworking the room when you have no connections, and about getting back up after setbacks.

For Rod, the stage version and the real version are different. The television show is a few minutes of pitching. The real story is decades of starting over, from a basement in Toronto to a security firm with hundreds of people. That is what stuck.

How Rod applies it

Talk about risk in business terms. Herjavec built a security company by explaining threats to buyers who were not technical. Rod's cybersecurity talks follow the same idea: what an attack costs, what leaders must decide, and what to fund first.
Treat selling as real work. Coulee Tech has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 list. Growth like that takes marketing and sales alongside the engineering, and Rod pushes IT owners to give both the same attention.
Stay in a lane. Herjavec went deep on security and built a name there. Coulee Tech did the same with healthcare and manufacturing, where compliance and downtime make the stakes plain.
Expect the hard years. A founder's path is not a straight line. Rod brings that honesty to his coaching, including AIBMM work, where progress up the maturity levels comes in steps, not leaps.

Rod met each of these people at business growth events where they were the featured speaker. The lessons are his own takeaways and do not imply an endorsement by anyone pictured.