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52 postsBarbara Corcoran is an American entrepreneur, investor, author and TV personality. She built a $1000 loan into a $70 million real estate brokerage business. She is best know as one of the “sharks” on the TV show, Shark Tank..
Corcoran invests in the food truck business on the 44th episode of the show. Cousins Maine Lobster co-founder:
It doesn’t scare us at all. It’s exciting. We are trying to really perfect it, and dial it in. Barbara has provided us with advice and insight, and we are workaholics. When someone presents us with something, we go 90 miles-an-hour one way towards it.
Corcoran writes about how the show initially went with another female investor:
My old spunk came rushing back and I banged out an email to Mark Burnett. It read:
Dear Mark,
I understand you’ve asked another girl to dance instead of me. Although I appreciate being reserved as a fallback, I’m much more accustomed to coming in first.
She suggested inviting both to the show’s tryouts, and eventually got the part:
The thing about successful entrepreneurs is that they don’t quit. They consider rejection, as I did, a ‘lucky charm’. I didn’t give up, because I knew Shark Tank was what I wanted, and that attitude got me my seat.
Corcoran reveals her best and worst deals on Shark Tank. She lost money investing in Cactus Jack and the Body Jac weight loss/exercise equipment:
My worst was investing in a fast-talking cowboy selling exercise equipment who needed to lose 50 pounds. Instead, he lost my $50,000.
Her best:
My best so far is Daisy Cakes, the absolutely best home-made cake you’ll ever eat! [Founder Kim Nelson] was right, and 100,000 cake eaters agree with her. It was also the first time I asked that I be paid “a dollar a cake” until my initial $50,000 investment was paid back. I got that money within three weeks, and her cakes are still selling like, well, hot cakes!
Corcoran offers tips for selling your house in a down market. Why it doesn’t make sense to wait:
Everybody’s thinking that way
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3—HspbKk
Daisy Cakes has sold 25,000 cakes in each state, including Hawaii and Alaska, since Corcoran’s investment on Shark Tank episode 20. Kim Nelson, the mail-order company’s founder, says part of the secret is that she uses family recipes. She also uses American-made products for all parts of the production process:
My cake tins are not made in China. They’re made in New Jersey. My labels — everything is printed — is made here. My doilies, my cellophane. My cousin is a designer. She designed my logo, and she gets these printed for me and shipped here.
Corcoran and O’Leary kiss to test out the Fire and Ice flavored combination lipsticks made by Shark Tank participants Kiss Mixx. Kiss Mixx founder:
You have to hold it for just a second
The company achieves sales of 10,000 a week since appearing on Shark Tank. Corcoran:
Prior to that, she had sold roughly 1,000 cakes over two years.
Corcoran talks about two key moments in her business career. She realized there was more money in selling than renting:
One was when I accidentally sold an apartment rather than renting it. I was just planning to rent the apartment when the young engineer said that he wanted to buy, that’s what got me in the sales business. It wasn’t a big plan.
She later made enough profit to buy her parents cars:
The other wonderful thing that happened was one year I actually had $80,000 in profits. Probably had maybe 500 salespeople and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got enough money to buy my mother and my father a new car.’ So, I bought him a Lincoln Continental — hey, what the heck, my dad dreamt about it his whole life — and I replaced my mother’s old rickety, old blue whatever-the-heck-it-was. And so, the idea that you could buy each of your parents a new car in one week and have it delivered was mindboggling, and I ended up going, ‘Whoa, maybe my business is actually a business.’
Corcoran talks about her books, handling rejection, and her advice for entrepreneurs. On how she handles being turned down:
I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the insult. …I just make a habit of making sure that I don’t lay low too long. In other words, I feel sorry for myself. I go, ‘Ouch, that hurt. That bastard,’ or whatever. Then, I just tell myself, ‘I’ve got about three minutes to feel sorry for myself, and let me move on to something else.’
On what’s wrong with most elevator pitches:
I will be the first one to tell someone what’s wrong, even though they’re not asking. Maybe I shouldn’t. But most people are appreciative. Entrepreneurs can’t communicate very clearly what it is they do. … It’s like, I’ll meet so many great entrepreneurs, and I’ve already liked them from the first hello. I liked the handshake, and I go, ‘So what do you do?’ and then for the next minute, I hear what they’re doing. It should be more like 10 seconds, because I’m already snoring out somewhere. I can’t stay with it that long. Already, they’re sliding down the scale of what I think of them, right? Clarity of communication, ‘I sell soap.’ Versus, we’re in the cleanliness business, blah-blah-blah. ‘I sell soap.’ Okay, I got you.
Fields interviews Corcoran about starting a business, being the only woman on Shark Tank, building a real estate empire, and Shark Tales. On creating demand with marketing:
I learned that everybody wants what everybody wants, and nobody wants what nobody wants
Corcoran gives a reporter for RealDeal magazine a tour of the $3.5 million three-bedroom apartment on 94th and Park that she bought in 2000 and renovated.
Corcoran and Higgins are featured for an article about the dynamics of couples where the wife earns more money than the husband. Corcoran says it challenged her femininity:
The struggle was as much mine as Bill’s.
She says Higgins was previously an FBI agent who made record numbers of arrests and a top Naval Reserve officer in the First Gulf War, as well as other prestigious jobs – he now has a business card with ‘Spouse’ printed on it:
I can readily take my business personality into the home. But he forces me to be a partner rather than the boss. It’s what keeps our marriage healthy.
Corcoran updates Use What You’ve Got to add stories from her stint on Shark Tank and in venture capital.
That’s the rags-to-riches story…and the lessons I learned along the way. Plus, all of the entrepreneurs, and their stories, that I invested in, and what they did right, and what they did wrong.
Whatever happened to Cactus Jack, Daisy Cakes, Tiffany the Elephant Lady. Because these are the questions I’m asked, day in and day out, at every airport. “Hey, whatever happened to . . .” It tells you a story, and lets you know exactly how well they succeeded, or how badly they failed.
Corcoran and her husband buy the ground-floor apartment in their coop building to use as personal and office space. Corcoran:
It’s the ultimate luxury to be able to separate when you want to
It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and was previously a doctor’s office. A private door opens directly onto Park, rather than going through the building’s lobby. The property was listed at $975,000 but Corcoran paid only $900,000.
Corcoran talks about women’s intuition in business, how being able to handle rejection is key to business, and being fabulous at failing:
Nobody likes being a loser and then you have to claw, figure out, and whip your way into a position of strength, the truth is if you’re great at being a loser, you’re going to be a winner in life…What women will do is take a leap of faith and listen to their intuition even when it doesn’t match up with logic, and that is powerful in business
Corcoran and Harrington invest $50,000 in the Body Jac after Cactus Jack loses 30 pounds using the weight loss equipment. Corcoran:
It’s going to be painful when that money comes out of the bank. Get out of here Jack, go on, I might change my mind.
Corcoran joins the show as a judge. Investors get an hour-long pitch to convince the panel of judges that their idea is worth investing in, and the footage is edited down to 10 minutes for TV. Mark Burnett:
If you’re coming in desperate for money, it’s like there’s blood in the water. If you want to be a great entrepreneur in the U.S., you had better be ready to swim in shark-infested waters.
Corcoran buys the five-family limestone townhouse at 408 Stuyvesant Avenue near Fulton Street in the Stuyvesant Heights Historic District, Bedford-Stuyvesant, at a cut-rate price from the original asking amount of $2.1 million.
Corcoran and Higgins buy the upper-floor condo in the converted town house at 163 East 71st Street in Lenox Hill. The four-bedroom unit occupies the second through fifth floors for a total of 2,700 square feet, and includes a hardwood roof deck.
Corcoran publishes 
Nextville: Amazing Places to Live the Rest of Your Life, identifying eight trends that the Baby Boomer generation is making as they begin to retire. The book encourages people to pursue their dreams, whether that means retiring in a city or college town, living green, or staying put in their home town.
What’s stopping you from taking the big step and moving to the perfect place to begin the best chapter of your life?
