Nice Shark Robert Herjavec Is Really Coming Into His Own as a Dancer

This is Robert Herjavec, perpetually smiling television entrepreneur and new contestant on Dancing with the Stars. The “son of an immigrant factory worker,” Herjavec is essentially the nicest man in the world—certainly, the nicest Shark in the Tank—and it cheers me to be able to aggregate the news for you that, although he has been having a hard time lately, what with divorcing his wife of 25 years (or as TMZ puts it, “pulling out of the biggest investment of his life”), Robert Herjavec has found a new lease on life as a Dancer.

He tells ABC News:

“I got separated almost a year now and you go through different highs and different lows and it’s difficult. Relationships are hard and you second-guess yourself but I couldn’t imagine something better because it is so far outside of my comfort zone that it kind of gave me a renewed hope and belief in the future.”

It is truly important to me on a personal level that Robert Herjavec feels a “renewed hope and belief in the future.” As even the most casual fan of the capitalist carnival that is Shark Tank can attest, there are few givens in this brutal world of Spiels and Deals: as American fates and small businesses hang in the balance, we can count on only a few things to remain constant, those things being Lori’s necklines, Cuban’s side-eye, Mr. Wonderful screaming the word “mon-ney,” and Robert Herjavec’s baby blue eyes lighting up like gentle fireworks whenever someone mentions babies, puppies, or anything family-oriented and cute.

(For proof, here is a photo of Robert Herjavec presenting at something called the “World Dog Awards.”)

What I’m saying is that Robert Herjavec’s adorable good humor is a pillar of Shark Tank, and thus an important component of my own personal well-being.

Recently, however, there have been some notable bumps in the road. A recent pitch for a scholarship app called Scholly prompted a very alarming fight between my role models. The entrepreneur in question was a young man who built an app to help high school students access scholarship information; Daymond and Lori made a deal with him, and Herjavec got quite aggressive, mostly towards Lori, saying that she’d only invested because she felt sorry for the guy, and the show wasn’t “Charity Tank.” (As the entrepreneur was black, and he’d made $100k off a single app in a year, Herjavec’s assertions seemed wrong across multiple dimensions.) Then he almost POKED Lori, and was all:

“You know what? You’re really pissing me off right now. I’m going to say something rude to you, and I don’t want to say something rude to you, so I’m just going to go. Because there was no need to do something like that. You’re smarter than that.”

OMG, Dad, no. You are smarter than to yell at your good friend Lori on camera.

But Dancing with the Stars is changing Robert Herjavec. He tells ABC News how dancing is enlarging his already capacious heart:

“I’ll have a greater appreciation for how people feel when they come out in front of us. I was probably the most empathetic one to begin with, but I’m gonna be in front of many, many millions of people, live, being judged by someone else and that’s a unique feeling for me. I understand how people feel and how much work goes into going out there.”

And helping him get his groove back, post-divorce:

“I’m at the gym the other day and I’m looking at the mirror and I see myself and I’m like ‘Wow, what a great butt. … Oh! That’s me!”

And really just making him even more amped for a world where the next puppy, baby, or career change is just around the corner:

“At my age, when you can do something like this, it kind of really reignites your excitement for life again and I’m pretty excited about life to begin with. I keep telling Kym, at the end of this process I will be a dancer. I may be bankrupt and my business may go bankrupt but I’ll be dancer!”

Fuck yes, Robert Herjavec. You go, Robert Herjavec. For more info on Robert Herjavec’s promising dance career (and some amazing photos), ABC News has you covered here and here.