Television personality and real estate expert Barbara Corcoran had a familiar rags-to-riches success story to share with her audience at the recent Grow Conference for entrepreneurs at Westchester Community College. Her story, and her celebrity as a star of ABC”™s business-pitch reality show “Shark Tank,” are evident in the title of her new bestselling book that was sold during her appearance on the Valhalla campus: “Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business.”
Corcoran was in her early 20s and a relative newcomer to Manhattan from her hometown of Edgewater, N.J., when she borrowed $1,000 from a boyfriend and started a real estate company with him on the Upper East Side. The partnership ended seven years later, when her boyfriend, a New Jersey developer who later went bankrupt, married Corcoran”™s secretary.
Corcoran took half of the brokerage”™s employees and in the same building leased space for her new company, The Corcoran Group. After 22 years, she sold the business for $66 million.
The former waitress in a Fort Lee diner was reminded of her new wealth at an ATM machine soon after the sale. After withdrawing her usual $200, “I had $44 million in my checking account,” she said.
Yet Corcoran said her success has been driven by failure. It is, she said, probably the most important lesson she has learned in business and one she shared with her audience.
“I am great at failure. That”™s what I know about myself.” A D student in high school and college who claimed she could not read or write until she was almost 9, “I”™ve been trained to be a loser and so I think I”™m going to fail,” she said.
She has overcome her fear of failure to act decisively in business. “Everybody works better under pressure,” she said. “You don”™t get to see what you”™re really made of until you shove yourself out there.”
When sizing up sales talent at The Corcoran Group, she looked for those who had known failure in their lives. “I”™m looking for people that can take a hit and get up,” she said. “The great salespeople and the great entrepreneurs don”™t spend any time feeling sorry for themselves. It”™s definitely a personality trait and I have found that without it, entrepreneurs cannot start a business.”
Corcoran offered four other lessons she learned when building a successful business.
One: “Perception creates reality.”
A largely unknown player leading a small company in New York”™s real estate market, Corcoran began writing The Corcoran Report, which combined market statistics with her analysis of New York City real estate trends. She was astonished when her first report was quoted in The New York Times.
“I realized I had a new partner in business ”“ The New York Times,” she said. “I found that I churned out the report and then the reality would follow. ”¦ I had discovered the most valuable lesson in business: that perception creates reality.”
Another lesson learned: “There are two types of people at work; there are the expanders and the containers.”
A business needs both, said Corcoran, who described herself as an expander. A business owner must recognize the types and employ them in that capacity, she said.
Corcoran cited as example her hiring of Esther Kaplan, who became her equity partner and president at The Corcoran Group. “I was after the person who was going to do everything in my business I didn”™t want to do,” she said. “Everything about her was containment,” which included reining in Corcoran”™s penchant for expansive spending.
Corcoran said her real estate business also taught her this lesson: “People who are good at bringing people in are no good at firing.”
The former CEO said she “mercilessly” fired agents who failed to meet specified sales goals. Firing lets people “find the job they do well,” said Corcoran, who helped fired employees with job referrals and placement.
Many real estate companies “don”™t get rid of the deadwood,” she said. “You need a system for firing.”
Finally, “Fun is good for business,” Corcoran told her Valhalla audience. “I think it”™s the most underutilized tool in all of business today.”
“If you can create fun in the workplace, people love you,” she said. At The Corcoran Group, “It was a culture of fun that made us the company that people wanted to be at.”
Corcoran”™s talk at the Grow Conference was sponsored by The Business Council of Westchester and Key Bank.
