Jack Barringer, standing in the shadow of Sound Stage 25, watches as props and stagehands flow around him like a river coursing through the endless rows of beige hangar buildings.

For the various employees of Sony Pictures Studios, it’s just another day at work. But Barringer is no employee.

Somewhere close by, Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary, the smug and intimidating Canadian businessman, is being peppered by makeup artists.

When the stage lights turn on and the cameras roll later that morning, it’s his job to be the baddest shark in the “Shark Tank” — the hit ABC show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to high-profile investors dubbed as the “sharks.”

And the confrontational O’Leary has the biggest teeth of them all.

The deals made on the show are real, but they’re not the purpose of the show.

And Barringer knows this. This was television. They didn’t pick his invention out of tens of thousands of applicants because they thought it was a good invention. They didn’t fly him out to Los Angeles because they thought this “Body Jac” exercise machine of his would be a hit — in fact, it didn’t turn out to be.

But as Barringer stood outside Sound Stage 25, displacing the steady flow of production assistants like a stone in a stream, he knew why he was there.

With his grey pony tail pulled tight, Barringer knew that when he stepped to center stage and the cameras focused their lenses that O’Leary was going to put on the pressure and Barringer was there to give them heat, to entertain, to put on a show.

The extravagant sliding double door opened on the mocked-up conference room in Sound Stage 25 and under the scrupulous gaze of O’Leary and the rest of the sharks, Cactus Jack Barringer stepped into the Shark Tank.

“Where are you from, Jack?” O’Leary said, pressing.

“I’m from Iowa. Where are you from?”

“Canada.”

“I’ll talk a little slower then.”

——-

Barringer lives with his wife Emy in a large, two story house in a quiet neighborhood in Ames, Iowa. The house is spacious, with wood flooring and a large brick fireplace.

From the street, it looks like any of the others on the cul-de-sac.

In the furnished basement, Barringer peers out from under the brim of his feathered-cowboy hat with steady, blue-eyes that pierce the room.

Before him sits a folding table, heaped with hundreds of sticky notes and scraps of paper torn from old notebooks. Scrawled on the notes are 40 years of anecdotes — quotes mostly, along with various quips and nuggets of wisdom — all noticed, captured and remembered by the self-made millionaire.

“Most people read these things once and move on with their lives,” Barringer said as he scanned his collection, his outfit looking simultaneously like Elvis Presley and Roy Rogers.

With one arm crossed and the other pulling at his mustache, he suddenly rips his stubby hand away from his beard, reaches down and plucks a note from the table, the tassels on his shirt flittering.

“This is one of my favorites,” he said, holding the note up to the light. “ ‘If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask where it’s going. Get on!’ ”

Cactus Jack, a nickname given to him by his father when he was five years old (and has been called by friends ever since), might as well be called the Neil Armstrong of opportunity. When a good piece of advice has come his way, he’s remembered it and taken it to heart.

His desire to surround himself with the collective wisdom of those who have succeeded has made him the millionaire, the moniker and the man that he is today.

Now Cactus Jack was holding the latest edition of “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, a 1937 book of knowledge, tips and techniques compiled by picking the brains of some of the greatest minds the world has ever known.

A book that, for the engaged reader, pulls at the corner of the veil that muffles ambition, a problem plaguing so many unsatisfied souls wandering through life. Having sold more than 70 million copies, its sermon is the idea that “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

“This was my college,” Barringer said.

He turned the book over in his hands, and pointed to a quotation — his own review of the most recent addition, right on the back cover.

“Buy it, you have a book … Read it, you have a blueprint … Do it, and you have the world,” he read. Underneath in italics is “Cactus Jack Barringer; entrepreneur, inventor, salesman extraordinaire.”

The 73-year-old entrepreneur — or entrep-manure, as he sometimes calls his flashy, atypical style — hasn’t shown any interest in retirement. But as a young man, he felt as though he was wandering though life, unsatisfied, feeling like he’d never done anything.

One day, he happened upon the book now clutched in his hand. It would open horizons of opportunity he’d never imagined. To Barringer, it was the captain’s seat on the Apollo.

Within its pages, Cactus Jack found the inspiration his life was missing. It had, with a firm grasp, been the hand that peeled back the ominous veil that shades the secret of life.

—————

It was the late 1910s. Half way around the globe, the world was fighting a war to redefine itself. But in Atlantic, a small town in southern Iowa, local establishment owners’ biggest worries were opening their doors in time for the local patrons to trudge in, out of the Iowa morning.

There had been a shortage of coal then, which heated homes, but there always seemed to be a shortage of such items with the war going on.

The government encouraged frugality, taking what resources it could and sending them overseas to aid the Allied war effort. When coal was sparse, the rich went uncomfortable, and the poor went cold.

One particular frosty day, as the sun was about to peek over the horizon, three young boys were tugging two wagons up the alley.

The boys strained in silence, or so they thought, through the twilight haze toward the rail yard. A 9-year-old John Barringer (Jack’s late father) clambered to the top of an idle coal car, and tossed down hunk after hunk of coal until the boys had filled their wagons.

The boys, now covered head to toe in soot, snuck out of the rail yard and back down the alley with their loot in tow.

But as they tip-toed their way back home they stopped, pulling their wagons up to the back porch of the little old lady’s house down the alley. The boys occupied themselves in a blur of commotion as the first few rays of the morning sun began to dissipate the dewey frost and the darkness.

After a moment, back to their wagons they came to resume their trek. Further down the alley, the Barringer boys made another stop, this time at the widowed mother’s house, and the hunkered down, innocent rascals placed a small pile of coal outside the widow’s door.

Then, once again, grabbing their wagons, they snuck to the next house. And to the next house. And the next one, leaving behind a day’s worth of heat at each back door.

The towns people knew what the boys were up to, from the shop keepers all the way to the rail yard workers.

Every day the “Black Diamond Raiders,” as the boys came to be known by the locals, set out to loot their black diamonds, filling one wagon to bring home and the other for the needy; there wasn’t a soul in all of Atlantic that didn’t turn a blind eye towards the little Robin Hoods.

As fate would have it, John Barringer would grow up to work for that very same railroad company in that very same rail yard, and raise a family in that very same town.

Atlantic was intimate in its very nature; there were few people to know, so everyone knew everyone. “Family” was an arbitrary term that often included friends and neighbors.

Manny Barringer — Jack’s uncle who once upon a time took part in looting the rail yard of its precious coal — ran the only taxi in town, which often helped little old ladies get their groceries and prescriptions.

Atlantic was a modest town nestled in the heart of the midwest. Fields unfurl toward the horizon, spotted with small towns here and there like little acorns bobbing in a sea of corn and soybeans. It was against this backdrop that the audacious Barringer grew up in the late 50s, early 60s.

News about JFK or Ole Miss that flashed across the fuzzy, black-and-white televisions and AM radios might as well have been from a distant world. But this world, like much of the American heartland, turned a bit slower.

Six-cylinder Chevrolets dragged down main streets sputtering oil and the tight harmonies of the Everly Brothers crackled from their stereos. Arms plopped down to rest through rolled-down windows; cuffs of leather jackets fluttered in the wind.

The guys were as edgy as the rock and roll they listened to, yet laid back as a limp hand hung over the top of the steering wheel by the wrist.

But cruising up behind was Barringer, leaning forward with both hands on the wheel, in his Matador Red 1957 Chevrolet paid for with money from bagging at the local grocery store for 65 cents an hour.

In the classroom he was hardly studious, earning mostly Ds and Fs and finishing second to last in his class.

Barringer would look on quietly with an absent gaze as if deep in thought, daydreaming of a distant idea. He was popular and witty, even though he was often occupied with his own thoughts, leaving the rest of the world to wonder what engrossed him.

Barringer seemed to get along with everyone. But his closest confidant was his high school sweet heart and future wife, Emy. She was slender and lady like, with hair cut short, dark eyes and a shy smile that flashed across her soft features.

She was in many regards a stark contrast to Barringer, who always seemed to gravitate toward the center of attention. Their companionship was as if it were scripted for a Hollywood film — The shy, innocent girl in love with the edgy, eccentric bad boy.

When Barringer wasn’t devoting his time to Emy, he could be found with his car club, the “Vaqueros,” who worked on their hot rods and drag raced down Highway 6 outside of Atlantic.

For a brief time, Barringer’s ’57 was the fastest in Atlantic. No one could beat him from the end of the highway to the bridge. Not even Dick Scybert, whose “Cherry Chopper” was the hottest car in town.

But the hot two-four barrel carburetors guzzled fuel at a rate of 4 miles per gallon and was much too expensive to maintain for a grocery store bagger like Barringer. He had to sell, vowing to himself:

“Someday, I’m gonna get me another one.”

———

It was dull evening in 1978, and hunkered over the end of the bar in a Hastings, Nebraska, lounge was Barringer and an old friend. They were passing the time with small talk, when Barringer’s friend began to fidget with a railing mounted on the wall by the end of bar.

A bemused Cactus Jack watched as his buddy spun the rail around, loose in its mounts. Pestered by the commotion, he reached down and clamped the rail with a sturdy hand. His buddy kept twisting, so Barringer clamped harder. Then the soon-to-be entrepreneur got an idea.

Reaching into his pocket, Barringer pulled out a quarter and placed it on top of the rail.

“All right now, if it falls this way, you win. If it falls that way, I win,” he said.

The two friends began twisting and turning the wobbly rail at the end of the bar, drawing in an audience as each quarter pinged across the floor.

Before too long, Barringer and his friend had given up their seats to the other patrons eager to try the game out and at that moment Cactus Jack realized his 25-cent game was a million dollar idea.

The very next morning, Barringer got on the phone with a welder and a cabinet maker.

“I have an idea. I want to have you make something for me,” he told them.

What came next was the prototype for the Monster Arm Wrestling machine.

Looking like a pulpit with a bike’s handle bars sticking out of the top, the user situates themselves on one side of the machine and grabs hold of one of the handles.

Connected to the other handle is the arm of an opponent. No arguing over the grip, arm length or unfair techniques.

Two bits and a squeaky rail was all Barringer needed to take an idea from the end of a bar in the middle of Nebraska and turn it into a product that would sell in 50 states and eight countries.

It saw tremendous success and Barringer attempted to capitalize by creating a similar team arm-wrestling machine. In order to fit multiple combatants around the new machines, the gearing of the machines had to be tweaked as well as the positioning of the users.

The machines had just started selling, when Barringer started getting calls about broken arms. The calls proliferated and before the machines could be recalled, lawsuits had been filed.

Of the fortune he had made, Cactus Jack lost every penny of it. His company declared bankruptcy. But soon, however, he would bounce back.

———

“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is,” said Speedy, the Alka-selzer mascot sung, as he danced on the television screen. As the phosphorescent light flicked across the room, Barringer turned to his wife as they sat quietly.

“I just got a million dollar idea,” he said. “Cleaner is 95 percent water. Anytime you buy a cleaner, 95 percent of it is plain, ordinary water with just a little bit of chemical in it. Why couldn’t a person make a tablet that would fizz like an Alka-Seltzer and drop it in your own water?”

Not one to sit on an idea, Barringer got right to work. A key to his success, and a major talking point in a number of speeches he gives across the country on marketing and entrepreneurship, is surrounding yourself with “masterminds”, or people that can help you do the things you don’t know how to do.

It’s helped Cactus Jack get idea after idea off the ground.

If it’s a machinist to help create a prototype or a chemist to design a formula, Barringer will call them up, pitch the idea or pay the fee; he’ll negotiate his way into production.

From this idea came Cactus Jack’s One Shot, a bullet-shaped tablet that when dropped into water, creates an all-purpose cleaner.

Just as the final touches were being put on his new product, Barringer caught wind of a TV show coming to Iowa looking for products to sell on television called Quality, Value and Convenience shopping, “QVC.”

It was during this period, that the “Cactus Jack” moniker became the mantra, when the cowboy from Atlantic donned his leather chaps and embroidered jackets and morphed into the marketing extraordinaire that he is today.

The idea spawned from none other than the fitness guru Richard Simmons, who danced across television sets in his short shorts and sequined tank tops in the 80s with an enthusiasm as bright as his bejeweled outfits.

Showmanship and charisma Barringer had plenty of.

On vacation with friends in Las Vegas, Barringer and his company stood near the end of an endless line of eager concert goers waiting to cram into the auditorium of Caesar’s Palace to see Frank Sinatra perform.

Prospects of getting in were low. Barringer elbowed his friend with a wink, then suddenly he flopped onto the floor, feigning unconsciousness. Security came rushing and Barringer started blathering how he was fine and just needed to sit down.

The staff insisted he be brought a wheel chair, and before long, Barringer’s friends followed him as he was wheeled to the front of the line.

But if he was going to be successful on TV, Cactus Jack needed a character.

So with his newly-grown whiskers and hair pulled back into a pony tail and donned in chaps embroidered with images of cacti, he packed up his product and trudged down to Des Moines.

He was packed into a booth next to the 300 other hopefuls from around the state, all hoping that the chopping channel might get a glimpse of their inventions.

It worked. Cactus Jack was chosen along with 19 other finalists to be on the show. QVC gave him 10 minutes on air to sell $100,000. It took him eight. Over the next four years, Cactus jack would sell over $10 million on the show.

“Dazzle them with diamonds, baffle them with bullshit,” as he likes to say.

He found success selling cleaners, but even after his years of experience, the veteran “entrep-manure” Cactus Jack is still as much a day-dreamer as the Jack Barringer who sat staring off in the classroom.

Likewise, his attention shifted from cleaners to his next venture, and then another and so on. Once it begins to feel like a job, he says, he’s ready to move on, ready for a new challenge. He thrives on breathing life into ideas, making them happen.

He’s now in his 70s, but in his mind he’s no closer to retirement than when he was betting quarters in a small-town Nebraska bar.

With a wink and a smile, he’s eager to share his secret. But to Barringer, it’s no secret at all. It’s simply following a passion. It’s the idea that “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”

“You become what you think about,” he said. “What keeps you up at night? What bothers you all day long? What drives you to the point where you won’t give up until you achieve it?”