Barbara Corcoran’s credentials include straight D’s in high school and college and twenty jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful Entrepreneurs in the country: she took a $1,000 loan to start The Corcoran Group. She parlayed that loan into a five-billion-dollar real estate business which she sold in 2001 for $66 million.
Subscribe to EOFire
Resource Mentioned:
- Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!
Success Quote
- “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.” – Mike Litman
Business Failure
- Barbara has an incredible journey to tell, and failures abound. Believe me, you don’t want to miss hearing her shark tales!
Entrepreneurial AHA Moment
- The Internet… yes, truly. The Internet. This story makes me wish I was alive in 1973. :-)
Current Business
- We talk a little business, and a little Shark Tank, and then a little more business.
Lightning Round
- Barbara reveals something about the Shark Tank that no fan knows… yet. :-)
Best Business Book
- How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Shark Tales by Barbara Corcoran
Sponsor Links
- Internet Prophets: The World’s Leading Experts Reveal How to Profit Online by Steve Olsher
Interview Links
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!
3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!
Subscribe to EOFire!
Full Transcript
John Lee Dumas: Hire Fire Nation and thank you for joining me for another episode of EntrepreneurOnFire.com, your daily dose of inspiration. If you enjoy this free podcast, please show your support by leaving a rating and review here at iTunes. I will make sure to give you a shout out on an upcoming showing to thank you!
John Lee Dumas: Okay, Fire Nation. Let’s get started. I am simply thrilled to introduce my guest today, Barbara Corcoran. Barbara, are you prepared to ignite?
Barbara Corcoran: I’m not only prepared to ignite, John. I’m sitting here looking at the photo of you and I’m prepared to ignite with you, brother! You’re good-looking!
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] Oh man! I love that! That’s my favorite yet.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara’s credentials include straight Ds in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country when she took a $1,000 loan to start The Corcoran Group. She parlayed that loan into a $5 billion real estate business, which she sold in 2001 for $66 million.
I’ve given Fire Nation a little overview, Barbara, but take a minute. Tell us about yourself. We want to get to know you personally. And then tell us about your business and what you have going on right now.
Barbara Corcoran: Well, I got that very lucky break that started me on the road to riches, so to speak, although it didn’t come so quickly, I must say. But I did get a $1,000 loan from a boyfriend. I know you’re not supposed to do that.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: But I did. I met him while waitressing at the Fort Lee Diner. When he walked in, it was like head over heels in love with this guy. I was crazy about him. But he gave me the $1,000 to start the business that was my 23rd job. I had done everything else. I think I worked since the time I was 11. That was just a lucky break because he said, “You know, you have a great personality. You’d be great in real estate sales,” and I said, “Why not? I’ve tried everything else.” That’s how I actually started in the real estate business. Just a wacky situation like that.
John Lee Dumas: Man, that is just a great start to any entrepreneurial journey. Barbara, before we delve more into that, and we’re definitely going to, we like to start every show off at EntrepreneurOnFire with a success quote. It gets that motivational ball rolling.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay.
John Lee Dumas: You already did it in the intro, but I know you have a success quote for us, and I’d love to hear it.
Barbara Corcoran: Well, it’s one that gets me going. I’m not sure it’s good for everybody else, but it’s good for me when I get at those points along the way, which still happens, I’m annoyed to admit that, where I feel stuck. I’m not quite sure what my objectives are, I’m not sure if I want to make that phone call, I’m not sure, and usually what’s in my way is my perfectionism. I just want to get it right. So the best thing I read – it’s not my quote, but I use it all the time for myself – is “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.” Why I like that is it really moves you off the box and I’m like, “Oh, okay, let me just pick up the phone and get it going.” That’s usually the hardest part. After that, it takes on a life of its own, as you know.
John Lee Dumas: That is so true. It is such the hardest part. Get that snowball rolling down the hill and you will be just amazed at the steam that you pick up, and so quickly. So Barbara, we’d like to take this down to the ground level because this is about you. You’re our spotlighted entrepreneur today. So share with us how you’ve actually applied this quote or this mentality to your life at some point.
Barbara Corcoran: Well, when I had sold my Corcoran Group company for $66 million, you would think I should have been the happiest gal in town, and I was for about a week, particularly the day after the closing when I was just wondering, “I wonder where all that money went? I signed a lot of papers, but what happens to that money?” Then when I went to get my usual $200 out of my Citibank cash machine in my neighborhood, I heard that chu, chu, chu, chu that you hear every time, and out came my $200 for the week that I always got, but I also got the little receipt that they shoot out, and in that, on that receipt was my first payment – $46 million sitting in my checking account. Boy, was that a thrill! I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa!
I got caught up in that story. What the heck was your question? I think I got a little off track here.
John Lee Dumas: How do you apply that success quote…
Barbara Corcoran: Oh yes. Whoa! I mean I sound like a politician by not answering the question, right?
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] You are hysterical!
Barbara Corcoran: So why I got into that stupid story is because I had to reinvent myself and figure, okay, once I realized I had to have a business, I was an entrepreneur, I was a workaholic, I loved what I did, and I just sold the damn thing. What was I thinking? Even though I had the money in the bank, it seemed somehow it didn’t replace all the things that the business brought to me personally. So I thought I’ve got to start myself all over again. I decided I’d go into the TV world as a TV talent and be an expert on real estate, which seems like an easy thing. I knew a bit more about it than most people out there, I had great notoriety, but you know what? No one returned my phone calls. I found out that my old rolodex was only good for the real estate brokerage business. It sure didn’t help me in the TV business. Once in a while, someone would agree to meet with me. I’d pitch them my ideas, what I want to do for their network, their station, the kind of segments I had in mind, and they would “Yes, yes, yes” me, and then they’d of course ask me, “What do you think my apartment’s worth?” and that’s really why they invited me in.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: So it got very, very discouraging, and for someone who had worked so hard to create such a clear success – I mean I couldn’t argue with my own success – I found I was feeling depressed and had a very hard time picking up the phone, getting ready for a presentation, asking for the job. I found it mortifying, frankly. And then I realized I just wanted to have everything right. So that, I think, was the first time I started practicing that quote, like just pick up the phone and do something. You don’t have to get it right. And I do that still every day. I had a rough week last week. A number of the entrepreneurs I had invested in were going through rough patches. This was going wrong, that was going wrong. I really want to avoid it. But I decided to make a list of the projects, the problems right next to who the problem was, and just one, bang, bang, bang, right after the other, I just picked up the phone, not knowing the solutions. But you know what’s wonderful about life? You go through a door, you jump out the window, you pick up the phone, and once you’re in the throe of it all, you are much more resourceful than you think you are. You always think better on your feet than sitting, observing and analyzing things. And so I think that freeing up to just push and make the first baby step, that’s all you got to do, make the first baby step, and then all the complicated stuff works out somehow because you had the courage to just go through without the answers in your hip pocket in the first place. I know that didn’t come out as clear as I wanted, but that’s kind of what I mean by it.
John Lee Dumas: I don’t know, Barbara. That was an amazing answer, and it just makes me think of one of my idols who’s Brian Tracy, and his quote was “Swallow the frog first.”
Barbara Corcoran: Oh!
John Lee Dumas: Isn’t that a true quote?
Barbara Corcoran: Isn’t it a true quote? You betcha! Well, it’s not marriage. You want to avoid that as quick as you can, right?
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: [Laughs] Well, I have to say to you, I don’t totally agree with the other guy because of this reason. I need a little treat, a little sweetener. So if I’ve got a list of say 15 things on my to do list, I always do something different. I go through the whole list and rate them A’s, B’s and C’s based on which ones are likely to produce the biggest effect on my business. So the A’s are obviously the ones that have the biggest net on it if you attend to those first. But let me tell you, I will often sit down and do two C’s right up on the front side which I’m writing two lovely thank you notes to two people because they were so sweet, and I really love them, I love my handwriting and I love my notepaper. I’ll mail them out and put the stamp on. I’m just kind of warming up to the attack. And then I’ll attack the A’s that I don’t want to do.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] That’s a perfect insight, Barbara. Thank you for clarifying that. That’s just going to be such valuable information for entrepreneurs that you’re right, don’t want to swallow that frog first thing. Maybe they want to do something kind of fun at first, kind of get that ball rolling…
Barbara Corcoran: You got to warm up, you know.
John Lee Dumas: Warm up. Get a couple of swings in. That’s a perfect lead in to our next topic, Barbara, and that is failure or challenges or obstacles.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, that I’m good at. You’re with the expert here on failure. I’m really good at that one.
John Lee Dumas: Well, you and every entrepreneur, Barbara, because as entrepreneurs, part of our journey is failure, and if we’re not failing on some levels, we’re really not being honest with ourselves as entrepreneurs. We’re not pushing the envelope, we’re not stretching our limits. So we need to be failing and making mistakes.
Barbara Corcoran: I would walk a mile to avoid a failure and embarrassment, but they come anyway. They come and find you.
John Lee Dumas: Have you learned from your mistakes, from your failures, Barbara? If so, pick out one that would really be a valuable lesson to Fire Nation.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, I could give you a thousand. Every single great thing that happened to me in building my career was immediately on the heels of a terrible, embarrassing failure, every single time. Now I don’t know if God had it out for me and just want to give me a hard time, but I never got a big whopping success unless I had gone through some trial of hell. It’s not one way or the other. So let me give you a few examples.
One, I had a great idea. I mean you would agree with me. At the time, everybody thought it was a great idea. I was taking all of the apartments and homes we had for sale in New York City and putting them on videotape. Now this was, remember, before there was such a thing as the Internet.
John Lee Dumas: Right.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay? So the way you usually saw the property is you find a little spot ad in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. You call the broker, make the appointment and go over and see it. So I was jumping way ahead of everybody. It’s a video camera. I spent my $77,000 profit – the first year I ever had a profit – and blew it on my “Homes On Tape.” Get it? “HOT” for hot. I thought it was the coolest thing. I got them all on videotape, I had my salespeople, I had a professional makeup person come in and had their hair done. They posed for the pictures with their phone numbers. That wasn’t being done yet. They looked beautiful. We got the Homes On Tape. And now said the salesman, he said, “Now we’re bringing the homes to your customers! They could sit and watch and pick out an apartment in their La-Z-Boy chair.” People thought I was a genius, okay? Well, of course, no one handed out the tapes, and you know why? I didn’t think of this. Now, you see, you ought to have hindsight. Because my agents didn’t want to give out all these apartments when their customer that they had control of could see the next agent and how pretty she looked and maybe want to go out with her instead. So they sabotaged my efforts unintentionally by doing nothing. And so my HOT Homes on Tape was a dismal failure.
Alright. Now I’m sorry I take such a long wind on this one. I’m sorry. But there is a story here, okay? Alright. So I’m getting ready for my big sales meeting. I have to admit this failure. No way! I’m thinking, how do I cover it? I’m too embarrassed to admit I failed here. By coincidence, I have dinner with my husband who was a weekend Navy Captain and he had just been in South Korea declaring war on North Korea on these computers. They play these stupid war games because they’re all boys and they like to play games where they bomb people and stuff.
John Lee Dumas: Oh yes!
Barbara Corcoran: So he was over in South Korea, bombing, bombing. He came home so wired up over this and he goes, “It was amazing!” He tells me the whole same story here every year. I’m like, “Bill, it sounds exactly like the same old thing you do every year. Why are you so excited?”
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: And he said, “Well, we did it in real time. We were doing it in real time.” I said, “What do you mean real time?” He goes, “We have this new thing called the Internet.” Bang! What’s Internet?
John Lee Dumas: Wow!
Barbara Corcoran: So I listened to what it was. The government had it first, obviously.
John Lee Dumas: Of course.
Barbara Corcoran: I heard what it was. I registered the Corcoran Group URL that next morning. We had the sales meeting that weekend and I announced, “We’re now taking all of these listings into cyberspace.” I didn’t even know what that word meant, and I still can’t state it, as you can hear. But we shot it out to the salespeople as though it was part of the plan. Everybody thought I was a genius all over again. I wasn’t a genius. I was just covering up for my mistake. I never thought I would do anything with this thing called the Internet. It was just the way I was covering up for it. And you know what? We had two sales out of London within that week. Bang! Bang! Well, all I did was throw all my units that I had on the stupid Homes On Tape on to the Internet, and then I registered all the URLs of my competitors in New York City and they had to call me and ask me for them back when they finally woke up to this best thing that was going to ever happen to the world of real estate called the Internet which totally changed the way property is sold today, as you well know. But that would have never happened if I wasn’t trying to cover up an embarrassment. It just wouldn’t happen. And every single good, great thing that pushed my business ahead happened on the heels of failure. I never had an easy way to it somehow. I’m still annoyed with it, honestly. I want a few easy strokes here.
John Lee Dumas: So Barbara, what year was that specifically?
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, that was I guess – don’t ask me for specifics on numbers. I’m terrible. I would guess ’72, ’73 maybe? You weren’t even alive then, my friend.
John Lee Dumas: Almost, but not quite.
Barbara Corcoran: Your birth was announced on the Internet.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: I was lucky and I was industrious enough to try to cover up my pain. And that’s the truth. I was just trying to plow forward. I had no idea that that was going to be the best thing. Do you know what an advantage it was to me to be able to try chat rooms first, take them up, put them down. The photos of virtual tools that really didn’t work then. Try everything. It’s such a forgiving medium. You throw it up on the wall and see if it sticks. You take it down if it doesn’t. It doesn’t cost you anything. So I was lucky and persistent, and you can give it to me on that, but that was not smart. Smart wasn’t part of it.
John Lee Dumas: See, I love that phrase “see if it sticks.” What is the major lesson that you really pulled out of that failure, of that time when you were just really trying to cover up what you viewed as a mistake?
Barbara Corcoran: That there’s great power in moving forward. There’s great power in moving forward, whether you’re moving in the right direction or not. At least you’re moving forward. The sense of making the right calls in business, which is really great to do. Hire the right people, put your right priorities front and forward. What not to do, what to leave behind. All these judgment calls are key to building a business, as you know. You have to be fairly savvy and make decent judgments. But I think it’s so much more important to just make a judgment and move on with it. My God, believe me, I’ve made so many misjudgments, but you know what’s great about being labeled a winner? Once you have a little success under your belt, nobody’s counting your failures. Everybody has already labeled you a winner and they really assume you’re going to succeed again. It’s the weirdest thing. It’s like you get to cheat your way to the top because you’ve already gotten the label as a winner. I know when I was building The Corcoran Group, I started four related real estate companies relative to my brokerage firm. I succeeded in one out of the four, and you know, nobody – the money spent, the effort put in, the announcements, the PR – nobody remembers the failures. They remember the winning. “Oh, that’s the gal. Oh, she made $66 million and built the biggest residential firm in New York.” That’s all they remember. And that’s that.
John Lee Dumas: That’s Barbara Corcoran. Mark Cuban loves to say, “You only have to be right once.” What do you think about that?
Barbara Corcoran: Well, if it’s only going to be once, you better make sure it’s a big one.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: I guess if you create one great business, that’s really all you need. Yes. Alright. I would have to know what he meant by that, but yes, that makes sense. I’m with him. But [Unintelligible], I have to live with the guy so I’m going to agree with him.
John Lee Dumas: Yes, I was going to say [Laughs]. So Barbara, you had a great tie-in with your failure to what your success quote was just to start, just to get moving, and I love that. Let’s use that to lead in to our next segment, to our next topic, which is the aha moment. That light bulb. You’ve already shared with us a light bulb that went off in your head with the Internet when your husband came home from Korea and you just saw what he was doing. But as entrepreneurs, and especially with your journey which has been just a great one, you’ve had so many aha moments and light bulbs that have gone off. Can you share with Fire Nation one or two aha moments, just light bulbs went off, and how you turned those moments into success?
Barbara Corcoran: Yes, yes. I’ll give you one that made the largest difference bar none in the building of my business, the branding of my business.
John Lee Dumas: Wonderful.
Barbara Corcoran: If you could build a big brand, the business takes care of itself, I’ve always learned. You almost have to run like hell to catch up with the big brand you put out there. It puts pressure on you.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: I remember sitting around, ready to take a gun and shoot one of my sales agents. I think I had 14 agents at the time, or somewhere there. They were coming into my office one after the other and whining and complaining as only great agents could do. Salespeople are not so easy to manage. They’re a pain in the ass, frankly.
John Lee Dumas: Oh yes.
Barbara Corcoran: But they’re a pain in the ass, and that also gives them their tremendous success as a salesperson. So they’re hard to live with, but they’re great to the outside [Laughs]. Two personalities. So I had the inside personalities, one person after another whining, “Wa, na, na…” What were they whining about? They were whining because I wasn’t advertising for them. Of course, I knew I wasn’t advertising for them because I had no money. I would have advertised them if I had the money, but it was a terrible real estate market. Interest rates I think were at 18%.
John Lee Dumas: Wow!
Barbara Corcoran: Nobody was really buying and I didn’t have the money. So I’m thinking about maybe just like scrounging out some money and buying a gun at the local place and killing them all because that’s where I was, right?
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: But instead, I’m sitting around thinking, okay, what else could I do? What else could I do? And I decided to take the 11 sales we had had for the year. We had a total of 11 sales for the 12 month period among that many agents. Not a good sign. I added them all up and I divided by 11 and I decided I would write a little report and it would be about what apartments were selling for, and it was so bad because prices were tumbling like crazy. So I typed on my little Selectric typewriter “The Corcoran Report” and I put “Average New York City Apartment Price,” and it was I think $54,000 and change at that time. I typed it in, and then I made like 60 copies and I folded it and I mailed it out to everyone who wrote for The New York Times that day. Writers always put their bylines under the caption in the paper so it’s easy to get a reporter’s name.
John Lee Dumas: Right.
Barbara Corcoran: And still today. So I just mailed it on out, okay? Thinking, well, maybe some of them will write about my little report, and then maybe a customer will read it on how much an apartment is selling, they’re looking for an apartment and call us. It was just a stretch, I know, but I had no other options so that’s what I did. Well, do you know? No one ever called me, sadly. No one ever, I felt, even received the report. I got nothing for it. But two weeks hence, I’m at home on a Sunday morning. I open up The New York Times and the front page of the real estate section, by coincidence the title reads “New York City Prices Hit All Time Low,” and I’m like, “Oh, that’s true!” and I’m feeling a little sorry for myself, like God! And then I read the reporter, Carter Horsley, a familiar name, and the first line of the author said, “According to Barbara Corcoran, the President of The Corcoran Group, New York City prices have hit an all-time low at $54,400.” I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like a miracle.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: I was raised Catholic. My mom would have called that a Catholic miracle. Those were the only kind, alright?
John Lee Dumas: Right.
Barbara Corcoran: So bang! I couldn’t believe it. You want to know something? That was my aha moment because when I went to the office that afternoon and calls, typically calls that brokers make to get listings, “Would you like to give us your property?” That kind of thing. For the first time in my life, I heard one of our salespeople say to whoever was on the other end of the phone, “Oh, you’ve heard of us?” He didn’t have to spell our name, literally did not have to spell “Corcoran,” which is a hard name to spell. It was usually “C-O-R-C-O-R… Oh no, again. C-O-R-C-O-R…” It was always confusion. But someone got it and I heard him say, “Oh, you’ve heard of us?” Awestruck was the salesman, John Beckman, and I realized that I had a new partner and it was called The New York Times. I started churning out so many reports, anything I could think of. When I churned out The Madonna Report when she got pregnant, she was the Lady Gaga of that moment, I didn’t get Madonna as a client, which would have been nice, but I got Richard Gere because his agent called me because I was in the press being the expert on Madonna, even though I had no idea what she was looking for, but anybody could have written that report. She’s rich, she needed a view, she needs security, she needed more space, she was having a baby. Right? It was just conjecture. But I churned out one report after another for the rest of my life, and the reason I was paid $66 million for my business was because $44 million of it was in the brand, $22 million on production. If they had paid for my business based on how we were producing, I was really entitled to a third of what I was paid, but I was paid that hefty sum because I had discovered the magic of producing a statistical report and churning it out day in and day out to the press and stealing the limelight from my competitors which built my brand. That’s how I did it. So that was beyond an aha moment. That was like having God himself come down and bless me.
John Lee Dumas: Such a powerful aha moment, and how you just used that to turn it into success is just inspiring, Barbara.
Barbara Corcoran: Over and over again. The press never needs a story idea. What they need are statistics. So if you could, whatever industry you’re in, be able to churn out statistics, a simple one page – like if you make buttons, okay? What’s the biggest button in the world? What’s the smallest button? What color do kids like best in buttons? I’d bring in a focus group of five kids, have them pick out buttons and I’d make that an analytical report if I was in the button industry. I mean I’m naming something stupid, of course, but no matter what industry you’re in, what seems boring to you if turned into statistics makes you an expert and gives you notoriety, and that’s the name and game changer of building a brand.
John Lee Dumas: It totally proves the point. It’s extremely valuable advice. Barbara, have you had an I’ve made it moment?
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, yes. Yes. Not like clearly, but I remember, yes, along the way you have these moments where you go, “Oh my God! I might be doing it!” Now sometimes it’s as clear as selling your business, okay? It’s a perfect report card. You got the money in the bank. But probably the best happy, happy aha moment, if you want, or whatever you just called it, whatever it is…
John Lee Dumas: I’ve made it.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay. I’ve made it, yes. It was one year, I couldn’t believe it, I had over $60,000 in profits in one year, which was a lot. The business was medium-sized. And I didn’t expect it. I always spent the money about a mile before it even landed on my desk. I already had it spent. But when I realized I had this windfall, I immediately went and got my mother and father a brand new car. They had never had a new car. My mother had only been licensed with three or four years, but she had an old clunker in Florida. My dad had an old clunker. He had always envied and wanted to have a Lincoln Continental. So I had my uncle pick them out in Florida, their favorite colors, and they were driven up and given to them. You want to know something? To this day, that is still the most satisfying, happiest thing that ever happened to me in my life because you could actually have the power to do something like that because you made the money in your business, fair and square, and then you could actually pay somebody back.
John Lee Dumas: That is an amazing I’ve made it moment, Barbara. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Barbara Corcoran: But the car’s old now. You can’t sell it for anything but scrap metal, sad enough. I’m only kidding!
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: Those cars are long gone. They had many others after that, but they were more easily affordable for me by then.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara, you have so many exciting things going on in your world right now. Can you just pull out one or two things that are just really exciting right now in what you’re doing with your business?
Barbara Corcoran: Well the things that excite me most are when I have an entrepreneur who’s had to trot and burning up the turf and has tremendous potential in the business. What happened when you’re talking about like today, [to pull something out], well this morning I had a very great Skype call with two new entrepreneurs. Well new by four months. That’s kind of new.
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Barbara Corcoran: They became my new partners. They owned Cousin’s Maine Lobster. Why it was so exciting is because you’ve got two entrepreneurs equally talented, but with talents in different arenas. It’s always a great combination for any entrepreneur. You got to partner with the opposite talents. Woo hoo! That’s like a dream come true. But anyway, they’re opening up their distribution business, they had some quality control issues. We actually thought of a solution. We thought of marketing solutions to the packaging. We got so much done in one hour. They had their food trucks in California that they’re making, believe it or not, $25,000 a month in profit on a food truck selling lobster. So we’re building a franchise model that they could knock out and make a really giant business and they have that down pat. Okay? So it was like one of those calls where within a two hour window, you thought the world was possible and the people who were holding the potential for the world being possible and had the talent to make it happen. I mean it was such a high. I feel like I should have really taken the rest of the day off, to tell you the truth, and just feel good about the world, but I couldn’t because I had a lot of other stuff. Some of those other things, what did that guy say? The turtle? What did that other guy say? The ones you don’t want to do ahead of you are those that I had to take care of.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: Yes. But there’s nothing more contagious than rubbing shoulders with someone who’s dreaming, but also has the will and capacity and the ability to jump over problems to actually get there and really make their dream come true. Being around people like that makes you smarter, makes your energy high, makes you feel satisfied, makes you think all of life is a bowl of cherries, which of course it isn’t. But it’s the happiest slice of the pie. So those days when I’m working with my entrepreneurs that are really winning and have that kind of talent, let me tell you, I’d like it to be 8, 12 hours a day. It’s usually half of my day, and the rest of the stupid problems I deal with. So that’s that. I don’t know if I answered your question.
John Lee Dumas: You answered it perfectly, and I couldn’t be happier with the actual topic that you chose because Barbara, I’m a Mainer and these guys are from Maine. They’re Maine-bred.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh! You cheater! You should’ve come clean on that in the first place [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: I had no idea where you were going with that, and I just love the fact that you chose some homebred Mainers that are making it happen out in California and it’s just the entrepreneurial spirit…
Barbara Corcoran: Let me tell you, we were – I’m sorry to interrupt you, I just have to tell you before I forget. We were at the Governor’s Mansion in Maine, and I’m sure you’ve seen that if you’re a Mainer.
John Lee Dumas: Oh yes.
Barbara Corcoran: His lovely wife, Ann, gave us a giant award for creating jobs in the state. So they’re doing good, creating jobs in Maine, burning up the turf in California, and there’s nothing to stop them. It’s like no matter where you look at that business, it’s doing good, and the lobsters are great, and the lobster rolls and the lobster pies, and people are ordering them like crazy. So yes, so it’s a thing where everybody’s winning. I wish all of life could be that way.
John Lee Dumas: Well, believe me, I’m tracking these guys because they are locals. They are right here.
Barbara Corcoran: You should interview these guys. These guys, you’ll fall in love with them. Don’t take up too much of their time, please.
John Lee Dumas: I won’t. Let’s just do a quick 25 minute call. I’m going to get them on the line and we will have a great interview with them. I promise. We’re going to get their message out to the world.
Barbara Corcoran: Well, promise it to your listeners because they’re in that delicious position of being a brand new business and their memories are raw and they’re straight shooters, they’re straight talkers. You’ll learn a lot from them.
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! I am looking forward to it. So Barbara, before we launch into the last segment of the show, which is the Lightning Round, I just want to ask for my listeners because they are all such Shark Tank fans. I mean they crowd around their televisions at [8:00] PM every single Friday night. They refuse to go out. They are just eyes glued to the television. Can you just tell us something about Shark Tank that you think that fans might find really interesting or really appealing?
Barbara Corcoran: Yes. Actually, what you don’t see at home and you should be aware it happens, when the production staff sends the entrepreneur into the tank walking through that shark tunnel, they’re always given the same marching orders. They’re wired, they have earpieces in so they could hear everything. But anyway, they’re standing there and that’s a lonely spot to sit in, but right before they enter, they say, “Don’t start your pitch until one of the sharks talks to you.” They are pumped. They’ve been practicing their pitch, they really want to do a good job. They’re like ready to burst out so they run through that tank. They always have a cocky look. They are looking you straight in the eye and they’re feeling really good about themselves. They’re dying to pitch. And then nobody talks to them for a full five minutes.
John Lee Dumas: Five minutes?!
Barbara Corcoran: Yes, it’s five minutes. Now at home, what you see is you see them walking to the tank and someone asks a question.
John Lee Dumas: Right away.
Barbara Corcoran: Yes. But what I see is I see somebody who’s terrible under pressure or someone who’s great under pressure, and what a great test that is. Do you know before they even open their mouth, I know who I’m out on. I just sort of come up with a reason why I can say on camera, “I’m out because…” Okay? But the truth is I know when I’m out right away because the guy takes his hand out of his pocket, then he’s shifting, he’s no longer making eye contact. His eyes are going crossed, he’s sweating the bullets, his knees are juggling. I mean this is a guy I’m going to give my money to. Is he going to make it to the finish line? I don’t think so. Alright. So that is like a dirty, nasty trick, but it works like a dream, and you know what it does for the production staff? It lets them have these giant cameras. They have these giant cameras that are like the size of an elephant that come within inches of the face. They try to record the sweat beads on the face. They’re making TV after all. So it’s a lot of pressure for those poor entrepreneurs, and no wonder when they start talking, sometimes they don’t have a voice right away or it takes them a while to get their ego back up, but it’s a great trick. Mean, but it works really well.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara, that is so fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. That is just something that people are going to take to the bank that’s going to change the way that they watch Shark Tank from this point forward.
Barbara Corcoran: You’re going to feel sorry for every entrepreneur.
John Lee Dumas: Every single one.
Barbara Corcoran: Yes. Every pitch you hear at home, we’re usually listening to the pitch for 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half, which is of course slimmed down to what? Five to eight minutes, I think.
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Barbara Corcoran: Don’t go on Shark Tank [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] So Barbara, I want to be incredibly respectful of your time because you’re being so generous with Fire Nation. So we’re going to move in, unfortunately, to the last segment. It breaks my heart because I love talking to you more than life itself. We’re going to enter the Lightning Round.
Barbara Corcoran: You are quite a schmoozer, John.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] I’ve never heard that before.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, come on! I’m sure it’s your middle name. Go ahead.
John Lee Dumas: So we’re going to enter the Lightning Round, Barbara. This is where I get to ask you a series of questions and you can come back at us, Fire Nation, with amazing and mind-blowing answers. Does that sound like a plan?
Barbara Corcoran: Okay. I don’t know if I have the mind-blowing answers.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] You have so far.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay.
John Lee Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?
Barbara Corcoran: Nothing at all, I have to say. My dad was fired every six months from his job as a printing press foreman and he had 10 kids to feed. I mean he’d come home from work early and we knew he was fired. He was like our John Wayne. We’d tell him, “Hey, Dad, were you fired?” and he’d tell us all the story. We loved it. But my mother didn’t. She had to feed the kids, right? So we were raised by a guy who should’ve been an entrepreneur.
John Lee Dumas: Absolutely!
Barbara Corcoran: He was arrogant. Talented, but arrogant, and had to feed 10 kids. So that wasn’t an option. But you know? Everyone in my family grew up to be an entrepreneur. Every single one of us started our own business, I think because he was a perfect walking and talking example of insubordination. You know what’s great about coming from a poor family? You’re not trying to please your parents. You have no pressure. You didn’t have to go to college if you don’t want to or whatever. Anything goes. You have no pressure. You have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but up. Do you know how freeing that is? It’s much harder for somebody with money or a middle class background or a comfortable life to become an entrepreneur than a poor kid because you throw everything to the wind. You had nothing to begin with. You were happy when you were poor. So if you’re poor again, what’s the big deal? So no, I can’t say I was ever held back from being an entrepreneur because I have lived a life that kind of pointed in that direction. Like why would you ever work for somebody else? I mean if I had to work for someone else, I might as well commit a crime and go to jail. For me, it would be like going to jail every day.
John Lee Dumas: I hear you. What is the best business advice that you ever received?
Barbara Corcoran: Well, all of my business advice came from my mother who never worked a day in her life. She knew nothing about business, but what she had is enormous common sense and she raised 10 kids on a shoestring budget, and was the most organized and motivating person you will ever meet. Well, God, there’s so many! My God, I wrote a book on everything on her. Alright. But having to do with specific to business and marketing because that was my forte, and still is marketing, I would say when she told me when I was whining about that job at the Fort Lee Diner, and because I was competing with the blond bombshell at the next counter who used to balance two coffee cups in each hand and two more on each of her breasts. That’s how big her chest was.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: It was like a shoebox glory with the blonde buzz hair. She looked like Dolly Parton. Just picture Dolly Parton when I say that. Anyway, I got off course. When I was whining to my mother about it being unfair that nobody was sitting at my counter, there were only two counters and she was getting all the tips, my mother suggested I braid my hair. She said, “If you don’t have big breasts, why don’t you put ribbons on your pigtails or braids or something?” I braided my hair and put red ribbons, and that’s what got Ramon Simone to sit at my counter. That was the best advice because if I hadn’t met him that night, he may not have given me a ride home, he may not have given me the $1,000 to start my business, and where the heck was I going to get $1,000? Okay? So that was great marketing advice. Play up what you got and forget about what you don’t have. I think I’ve used that successfully with all of my entrepreneurs, and of course with my own business, trying to make the most of what I’ve got there with a marketing gimmick.
Like a great example, by the way, is my Pork Barrel BBQ guys. You should interview those guys, by the way. The guy, he’s a dead ringer for a pig. I mean, an endurable pig, but he looks just like a pig. What a marketing advantage! So he uses that. He walks into a meeting, sells to the big stores, and they’re staring at him. They’re all thinking the same thing, doesn’t he look like a pig? It’s a great thing. He doesn’t mind. He’s selling a ton of barbeque sauce. Almost $1 million this year.
John Lee Dumas: Well, didn’t you call him out too and say, “You have to dress up as a pig”?
Barbara Corcoran: I made it part of the deal. You know why I made it part of the deal on Shark Tank? Because why would I want to get into bed with an entrepreneur who had such an obvious marketing advantage and maybe was afraid to use it? But he said yes, and that for me was the deal sweetener. It’s kind of like that guy who used to sell chickens years ago who looked just like a chicken. What an advantage he had! None of the other chicken – oh, Perdue, the biggest brand in chickens. Do you think that had something to do with Frank Perdue looking like a chicken? I sure did. Okay? So yes, I love Heath. Heath Hall. You got to interview him. But don’t tell him he looks like a pig. He’s getting tired of hearing it.
John Lee Dumas: I absolutely will not, Barbara.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: What do you regret doing or not doing at some point in your journey and what lessons did you learn from that?
Barbara Corcoran: I would say the only regret, because it took me far too long to do it – I don’t know what my excuse was. I don’t think I had an excuse – was when my boyfriend left me. My boyfriend and business partner, Ramon Simone, with accents on both names, left me and married my secretary. I just couldn’t believe it. I was raising his three kids. I thought we were the item. We had been together seven years, I guess.
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Barbara Corcoran: Seven year itch, proving that theory. But when he left to marry Tina, I stayed in the business. He owns a 51% part and he told me I couldn’t fire Tina. He was the controlling partner. He was right. But it was a heartbreaker for me to work every day with who used to be my secretary. Now she’s Mrs. Simone and I felt ashamed of myself. Rejection is not an easy thing in love.
John Lee Dumas: Of course.
Barbara Corcoran: In love and in business all at once, right? But I stayed with that for over a year and accepted that situation, until one day I walked in and said, “We’re ending this business. Now let me tell you how we’re going to do it.” We divvied it up just like a football draw. He picked the best salesperson, I picked the next. It was fair. I moved out, he stayed. But I’m embarrassed that I took so long to wake up on that when I should’ve said, “No, not acceptable,” but you know what? I didn’t have the confidence. He had found me in my little town. He had discovered me. He had told me I was smart. He had given me the $1,000. So a lot of my confidence rode on that card. So that’s my excuse, but not an excuse really because I should’ve just said, “Oh, really? I’m out of here, baby!” but I didn’t know the salespeople would follow me. I didn’t know I had the power I had. You tend to undermine that if you’re self-effacing, and it can be very dangerous if you let it get in your way of making change. Sadly for me, I was a slow changer on that one and should not have been.
John Lee Dumas: Powerful! Barbara, besides the two phenomenal entrepreneurs you’ve mentioned, which entrepreneur that you’ve invested in excites you most right now?
Barbara Corcoran: Well, this is, you’re going to broadcast this somewhere. This is like asking a mother who her favorite child is, and they’re all like my children. I don’t want to tell you. So why don’t I add to your list so I won’t get in trouble because I love any entrepreneur who has the energy and desire. And desires can be fleeting. You could have passion for a business today. It’s meaningless if it doesn’t last six years from now and the going gets tough, right? But I have Daisy Cakes. An amazing human being. Terrific, terrific promoter. She opens her mouth and the cameras click. She sells more Daisy Cakes online than anybody. Well, Daisy Cakes cakes [Unintelligible] online than anybody. She’s had a million dollars in sales in a year-and-a-half. That’s pretty remarkable.
John Lee Dumas: Wow!
Barbara Corcoran: She deserves her success. I have to say I adore and admire Eva the Elephant, Tiffany Krumins, who is the inventor of Eva the Elephant, because it’s a medicine dispenser she invented to make kids who had AIDS take their medicines 17 times a day or 18 times a day, right? I admire her because after she did that great do good and she had been rewarded forever, she came down with cancer and pulled that business out from under a tent in a hospital room where she was in bed for over 14 months. Pretty amazing that somebody could do that, right? So I have to love her really a lot, right? You have to love her and respect her.
John Lee Dumas: Absolutely!
Barbara Corcoran: Then I mentioned my BBQ guys. I’m not supposed to talk about what I buy in the future. See, we’re already working with the entrepreneurs we bought that you don’t know about yet in here.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: Erase, erase, erase that. I could lose my job over it.
John Lee Dumas: I will. It’ll be erased. I’m marking it down right now.
Barbara Corcoran: Let me tell you, I also have a couple of clunkers that I invested in that just didn’t have the stamina to stay the course. It’s not easy building a business. They will remain nameless, but they also are on my red list with big red letters – “Business Losses” [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: That’s the game.
John Lee Dumas: Let’s not forget about the Mainers.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh, the Mainers, come on. Cousin’s Maine Lobster, well, first of all, I wish I could be 30 years – maybe 30, 40 years young and I would definitely marry both those guys in a three-way wedding, without a doubt. They are so adorable. Besides having the business acumen, they are so good-looking. I can’t even do a Skype call with their face up. It distracts me.
John Lee Dumas: Hey, they grow us right in Maine, Barbara.
Barbara Corcoran: They must! You’re all good-looking. You know what? Actually now, I’m comparing your face to Sabin and Jim. I have to tell you, Sabin is better looking, but you’re better looking than Jim. There you go. You’re smack in the middle.
John Lee Dumas: Wow! One of the two ain’t bad, Barbara.
Barbara Corcoran: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] So I’m going to change it up just a little bit here. If you could recommend one book to Fire Nation, what would it be?
Barbara Corcoran: For me, and I have to tell you, I honestly do not do a lot of reading so you’re probably asking the wrong person, but the one book I read probably every six to seven years because it’s so pure and simple and so powerful, I would say “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
John Lee Dumas: Yes, Dale Carnegie.
Barbara Corcoran: Can I tell you, it doesn’t get old somehow. It does not get old. It’s such common sense. It’s all about people skills. With all the Harvard MBAs and that stuff running around that often don’t have common sense and don’t know crap – forgive my language – about running a business often, they know how to analyze and theorize, but they don’t know how to do it. A big difference. I’m not saying unequivocally. I’m just saying what’s great about that book is it really points to the fact it’s all about the people. Business shouldn’t have the name “business” because what really has to do with business, it really has everything to do with people. How well you work with people, what kind of teams you build, how you get people on your side, how to persuade people, how to really care about the quality because you don’t want to disappoint your customers. It’s all about the people, and that book is a great one about telling you how to influence people.
John Lee Dumas: You’re so right. It’s so great to reread because that’s a book you can’t help, but for the three months after you read that, you are going to act differently because you see how your actions are mirrored by the people you’re talking to.
Barbara Corcoran: Yes. You know what the second best book in the entire world is on business book after that one? It would have to be my book, “Shark Tales” [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: I love it!
Barbara Corcoran: Of course I’m a self-promoter. I don’t know if it’s the second best book, but that one I’ve read 500 times because I had to write the damn thing and edit it 5 million times, okay? But I do get phenomenal feedback, and if I was going to die and say what did I really do well for life and to be proud of, I would writing that book. I think honestly, I get more feedback on that than I do on Shark Tank because I think it touches people in a certain way.
John Lee Dumas: Wonderful! Well, I’m going to link that up in the show notes front and center.
Barbara Corcoran: Don’t bother! I only make $0.50 a copy. It’s not worth it.
John Lee Dumas: Oh, you got to Amazon publish that. You’ll make $7.
Barbara Corcoran: Really? Then why did I go to Penguin and Putnam?
John Lee Dumas: We’ll talk.
Barbara Corcoran: Is that true? That’s upsetting me. You’re too late on that advice.
John Lee Dumas: You get 70% of every sale you make on Amazon Publishing. That’s why Tim Ferriss just came out with “The 4-Hour Chef” solely on Amazon Publishing. He’s selling for $9.99 and he makes $6.99 on every sale.
Barbara Corcoran: Well, guess what, honey, I love you now, and I’ve even going to lie and say you’re better looking than Sabin and Jim put together because I love that idea, and how is it I didn’t know that?
John Lee Dumas: I don’t know, Barbara. You need people like me in your life.
Barbara Corcoran: I guess I do.
John Lee Dumas: We’re going to move on to the last question of the interview. It’s my favorite. It’s kind of difficult. So take your time, digest it, and then come back at Fire Nation with an amazing answer.
Barbara Corcoran: Oh God, the pressure!
John Lee Dumas: Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning, Barbara, in a brand new world, identical to earth, but you knew nobody. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have right now. Your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500. What do you do in the next seven days?
Barbara Corcoran: 500 bucks and a laptop and you don’t know anyone? Well, I would work on the missing piece, which isn’t the money. $500 is still $500. It isn’t the access, which would be the laptop. You have access. I would work on finding new people. I’d start a blog on anything. The sun setting, the sun rising. If there were people who want to do real estate, I know that. If I want to do small business, I’d do that. I’d just start writing a blog with the sole purpose of trying to find followers. Now, that might not sound like a business plan, but once I had enough people reading my blog, then I’d figure out what to do that they would be willing to follow me [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Barbara Corcoran: I’d kind of do it as backwards, right? But if you have the people who are listening to you, it’s really like a question of filling in the blank, and then you also can talk back again. Like, “Hey, what do you need help with?” You’re going to find probably an embarrassment of 12 different new businesses within that communication, but you’re not going to find anything or even think of anything good if you don’t have the people. So yes, I would do this definitely. And with the 500 bucks, I’d probably go out and buy myself a new outfit so I’d feel really nice.
John Lee Dumas: Alright!
Barbara Corcoran: So when I’m sitting around, writing, I’d feel like I look the part. Like a cool lady in a cool outfit.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara, that is great actionable advice, and you’ve given us great actionable advice this entire interview and we are all better for it. Give Fire Nation one parting piece of guidance, then share with us how we can connect with you, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Barbara Corcoran: Okay. The guidance is if you’re working your ass off or whatever you’re trying to do, forget about it. It’s no problem working like crazy. I’m a workaholic, no doubt, and I love it. I don’t know why they call it work for me. But you should go to your calendar right now and cross out the days you’re going on vacation, even if you have nowhere to go, even if you’re just sitting on a bump on a beach somewhere. You should cross out the days for the whole year when you’re going on vacation. I have gotten all of my business ideas outside the office and never at my desk. Never. And it was always I had the juice and the deliciousness of looking forward to those two days or four days, and when I could afford it, a week, coming up two months’ out, and I almost enjoy the vacation more before it even hit, but you got to be able to be good to yourself. I mean one reason I think I’ve done well is I love myself. I mean I don’t think I’m conceited, but I take care of getting joy out of life and I put the joy first.
John Lee Dumas: Right.
Barbara Corcoran: You know what? The business will fill up all the spaces, no doubt.
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Barbara Corcoran: So you’ve got to put that ahead in your calendar now for the whole year. Mine? I vacation every fifth week like a clock. You can’t find me, you can’t reach me. You know why? Because I come back a better leader, a better businessperson, a better person, a better mom, a better wife. Well, not so much a better wife. I’m hard to live with. But short of that, better at everything else. And it makes a big difference, believe me.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara, how can we connect with you?
Barbara Corcoran: Oh. Well, what are you connecting for? You want a date, or what’s going on here?
John Lee Dumas: Well, I personally want a date, but I’m sure my listeners, they want to see you on Facebook.
Barbara Corcoran: Yes, yes. Over at Facebook, [Unintelligible] on to my name, Barbara Corcoran, and it’s Barbara@barbaracorcoran.com.
John Lee Dumas: Barbara, thank you for being so generous with your time. I know you don’t like to play favorites, but I’m going to play a favorite. This is my 123rd interview, 123.
Barbara Corcoran: Wow!
John Lee Dumas: And you are my favorite interviewee.
Barbara Corcoran: John, I’m going to check your other tapes and see how many times you said that. I don’t believe you.
John Lee Dumas: Zero times, Barbara.
Barbara Corcoran: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: 123 interviews, zero other times. You are my favorite.
Barbara Corcoran: You better get better interviews then. That’s all I have to say.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] I’m secretly, but no longer, secretly in love with you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with Fire Nation.
