Swimming with a ‘Shark’
Investor on hit show talks about fame, competition and how bad experiences can fuel success
“False fame,” says Barbara Corcoran, puttering around her bright, minimalist Park Avenue office in New York. She’s wearing no makeup, and her face looks pink because she had a skin procedure that her dermatologist promised would make her look younger.
“So much of my success depends on how I look, and I’m 67,” she says, shaking her head. “Why didn’t I have this (fame) in reverse, when I looked good? What a joke.”
Corcoran is taping the eighth season of ABC’s “Shark Tank,” and she’s well aware of the power of image. Her skill at it has served her well, both in selling herself and in moving real estate during her 23 years at the top of her New York brokerage, Corcoran Group. Her uncanny instincts and killer work ethic also helped her as she built Corcoran Group into a powerhouse before selling it for $66 million in 2001.
Today, Corcoran is busier than ever, appearing regularly on TV, charging $70,000 for speaking gigs, owning pieces of dozens of companies and traveling to promote her role as one of the investors on “Shark Tank.”
In Corcoran’s view, becoming a fiercely competitive entrepreneur can be traced back to a difficult childhood. It was not without love; it was certainly without much money and it included an erratic father who talked down to her mother. Corcoran wrapped those disappointments and every slight she encountered in business around her like so much armor. The vibrant personality you see on “Shark Tank” is entrepreneur-as-survivor, and it informs every business decision she makes today.
What she learned and what she practices can be a lesson to others.
Corcoran’s mother, Florence, is the first person she credits with her success.
“She had 10 kids. I never saw her sleep; I never saw her lay down. I didn’t even know when she slept,” she says.
Her mother was the person who showed Corcoran the meaning of efficiency. Her mom also saw the good in everyone, and she always pointed out those positive qualities. Today, Corcoran says she can immediately spot someone’s special gift, a skill that has helped her hire, place and, more importantly, retain great employees.
“You give someone a sincere compliment about what their great gift is and they will always measure up,” she says, in a bit of smart advice for other business owners.
Her mom is also the reason she won’t suffer complainers — the only type of employee Corcoran will warn just once before firing.
“Complainers see life through a negative lens,” Corcoran says. “They don’t fix anything.”
Corcoran doesn’t talk as much about her father, Edwin W. Corcoran Jr., who died in 2011. Yet his impact was equally profound, if in a different way. He was the neighborhood “fun dad” whom all the kids loved. But he also never held a job for long. Watching her father struggle with a variety of bosses made her never want to work for anyone. He was the reason she became an entrepreneur. But the irregular employment of the sole breadwinner in the household threw the family’s fragile finances into
“You give someone a sincere compliment about what their great gift is and they will always measure up.”
frequent turmoil.
Corcoran says that “poor kids have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but up. They have no parental pressure to be a somebody when they grow up. They don’t have to succeed, but they have in spades the wonderful trait of being needy. They need to succeed. That’s the magic bottom-line juice I’m looking for (on the show), and it’s very hard to have that innately if you’ve grown up with privilege and a high degree of education. It truthfully is. You’re better off being poor.”
In New York’s no-holds-barred residential real estate market, women dominated sales, but the companies were owned and managed by men. But Corcoran’s tough upbringing gave her the skill to deflect decades of gender bias in the industry. It was another gift from her father.
“When he drank, he would show my mother disrespect verbally. My mother accepted it. And even as a little kid, I said to myself I would never, ever, let a man speak to me like that. It lit a fuse inside of me.”
The resulting fury was invaluable on her path to entrepreneurship.
“It became my best friend running my business,” she says. “The minute a man talked down to me, I was my best self. I was going to get from that person what I wanted, come hell or high water. Even by the time I got it, sometimes I didn’t want it anymore, but I grabbed it because I had to show him that he was not smarter than me. He was not going to dismiss me. I would not tolerate it.”
On one wall in Corcoran’s office are 27 framed photos of the entrepreneurs she’s invested in during her seven seasons on “Shark Tank.” Photos of the ones who are out of business have been removed. Some are upside down. Those are entrepreneurs that Corcoran concedes “are not going to build a big business.” The others are alive and well and making money, and Corcoran is still actively involved with them.
The right-side-up group has many things in common with Corcoran, and perhaps that’s one reason she picked them.
“They’re sickly competitive,” she says. “The more sickly competitive someone is without reason, like me, the better.”
She realizes that such a personality trait is “harmful in almost every situation, but it makes you a great entrepreneur. You know why? Because even if you’re aiming at the wrong stuff, you’re running hard. So you run hard at everything. Some of it hits; some of it doesn’t.”