SHARK TANK Investor Explains The SECRET TO SUCCESS In Business! | Barbara Corcoran & Allison Maslan

To build an empire, you need to inspire people. You need for them to say, like, I'll go to that mountain with you. I'm right there, baby. Oh, there's a click on. Don't worry about it.

You know, nobody personifies that creative grit more than you. I would love for you to just kick this off by sharing your incredible backstory, how you entered the world of entrepreneurship and have created all that you've done.

Okay, well, I came from a very large family, so I always had a job because we always, we all work to help out the family. We had 10 kids in a two bedroom apartment, so needless to say, we were all pitching in as best we could. The advantage there was, even though I, I wasn't running a business on my own, my mother was running her household very much like a business. So I had a great role model right from the get go. Real estate was not my first business. I started a flower of the week club where I delivered flowers every week to apartment owners in New Jersey, which is where my hometown was. And that failed, but at least I had it going for about a year. And then I was working as a diner waitress when I met my first boyfriend, Ramon Simone from the Basque country. His real name was ray Simon from 145th street, but it would be years before I found that out. But Ray was my lucky break, I guess I could say, because he offered to loan me $1,000 to start a real estate business a year after I met him, simply because he said I have great personality, thought I would do very well in real estate sales. And so he took 51% of the firm, I got 49% of the firm, and we started the Corcoran Simone company. I'll fast forward seven years when he came home one night and as I was making his three kids pasta because we were living together by that juncture, he announced that he was going to marry my secretary, Tina. I was so shocked, I went into a tailspin. I just couldn't believe it. He told me to take my time moving out. I took about a minute, grabbed my toothbrush and got out of there and stayed with a friend on her Sofa on East 79th Street. From there, I had a very terrible year emotionally. I mean, you wouldn't know it by looking at me, but inside I was broken up. I had lost my confidence. After all, Ray found me at the diner. After all, he believed in me. He gave me the thousand dollars. I thought I'd be nothing without him. About a year later, just through heartbreak, I guess, seeing he And Tina having fun at the office all the time. It just was a heartbreaker. I decided to end the business, and I told him we were going to chop it up like a football. Drawer, Drawer. That's my new jersey coming out. That's raw. Not with the er. I still can't get it right.

But we.

But I told them to choose the best salesperson. I would choose a set. We went right down the rank, and we cut our 14 people into two teams. And I announced that I was moving out on that Monday from that Friday to my seven people. They were surprised. Asked where we were moving, and I said it was a surprise because I had no idea. But I rented a similar space on the 11th floor above the 8th floor where I was. And that became the beginning of the Corcoran Group. I named it the group, which is popular now. It wasn't popular then, to use that word, but I named it the Group because I knew I was going to need all the help of all seven of those people to make it. And they were my group. And that was the birth of the Corcoran Group. So I really have to look back and thank beautiful Tina. At the time, I hated her, but I have to look back and thank her.

Yeah, that's where the hindsight is valuable, which I'm sure we'll have a lot of hindsight when we get through this challenge as well. But you've overcome so much adversity, like you've just shared, been through many down economies. Can you share any of those other stories that, you know, you've turned lemon into lemonades and maybe the keys. You know, how you overcame that fear?

You know, fear's a funny thing when you're afraid of going out of business. And I was always in that posture my whole life. Oh, my God, what if I go out of business? And my logic went like this. If I go out of business, all these people that are my family that I hired and trained and loved and nurtured and put up with on bad days, I would lose them. I think that was my motivation. I truly, truly loved my team. Everyone, even the ones that drove me crazy, somehow, I love them. And so that was my fear. Fear of losing my team. It wasn't so much fear of going out of business. After all, where did I come from? I had nothing to go and nowhere to go but up. And I was too stupid to know any better of how bad a bankruptcy might be. But I wasn't afraid of that. I knew I could always get my job back as a waitress. And I was a pretty good waitress, made a lot of tips. So that was my posture. And. And that's a very free posture to have. But again, back to my fear of losing my team. I remember in. I don't know what years they are, they all blend now. But I've been through so many tough times. But I always, again, in hindsight, saw that I went into the tough time in a certain market position. And when I came out, because so many people went out of business, I came up the rank just by surviving. And I think that's what you have to remember in every tough time as we're having right now. Be aware that not everybody's going to come out of this. Not a lot of small businesses that think they're going to come out or even going to come out. So you have to realize your reward is you have less competition and you're going to discover new ways to do things. I'll give you a couple of examples. I invented the Corcoran Report because I had a complaining salesperson was driving me crazy, just one of those kind of big personalities. And I told her, oh, I thought of a new idea to get her advertising because I had no money to advertise. But the idea was I had no idea. And so just to maybe shut her up, honestly, looked at my 11 sales for the year. There were 11 in total for the entire year. And we probably had 26 agents in. So we were near death at that point. And I added them up, divided by 11. I came out with an average sale price and I published it as the average price for New York City apartments. I didn't know any better. I didn't know you don't label it that way. It was my average price. I sent it out to the New York Times. We appear on the front page of the real estate section the following Monday. And the quote was, according to Barbara Corcoran, the president of the Corcoran Group, I was like, oh, my God, what happened? That introduced me to the world of media, how to promote yourself. Because I realized that day that I had a new partner in my business. It was called the New York Times. And that turned into the Wall Street Journal and that turned into New York Magazine and eventually the TV space, where I got tremendous notoriety by being an expert on statistics. Interesting that I would get notoriety as an expert on statistics. I still don't know past my three times table. Once I get to the four, it's a problem because I was a horrific student always and didn't learn that kind of stuff. But I was positioned as the expert in the industry. And that was a result of, I guess, trying to make lemons out of lemonades or whatever you just said. But more honestly, trying to shut a salesperson up who's driving me crazy. That was important. I remember losing my speech the very first time I was invited to speak to an audience. It was 300 Citibankers. I was so honored. But when I got up there, despite the fact that I had practiced for a month because I was scared to death, I lost my voice. Was asked to sit down. But how that turned into something terrific is I decided I was never going to speak again. I was never going to go back there again. It was mortifying. I actually remember walking home that night and thinking everybody was recognizing me. Is that the girl that lost your voice? Nobody cares when you fail except yourself, right? But anyway, the next morning I got over myself and I wrote up a course curriculum how to sell real estate. The only thing I knew how to do. And I presented it to the learning annex at NYU. And I taught a 12 week course just to get over my fear of public speaking. And who appears in the very first class as my prize. Carrie Chiang. Who was the number one broker in New York City. And I had no idea she didn't know that. Then she became the number one broker and I hustled her for the 12 weeks and she moved over to my company with her three free Asian cousins who work for me for free. And she became the number one broker in real estate in New York City and still is to this day. That was nothing more than a lucky break. Do you want me to give you more? I have so many more. Or do you want.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean all of these stories are so inspiring. Yes.

Can learn more through stories, I think than lectures. Or at least I remember for sure. The one day sale. Okay, how did the one day sale happen? Interest rates were at 18%. No one was buying anything. I was preparing a speech for my sales agents finally to throw in the towel. I owed money to the ad agencies. I owed money to the kazoo. I was ashamed of myself. But the market just bolded when interest rates went to 18%. And so I couldn't think of one more thing to try. I had tried everything. And then I just kind of weird idea. Remembering a puppy sale my mother took all the kids to when we were little kids in New Jersey. And I did a knockoff on the puppy sale. This is how it went. I went to a large developer in town. He owned 88 units owned by Equitable Insurance and the Mendic Corporation. I went to Bernie Mendick and I said, I have an idea to dump all those apartments. And nobody could sell them. They didn't have kitchens, low floors, high floors, west side, east side. All random apartments. I said, I'm going to price them all. Like one price. The pick of the litter. Thinking about the puppy sale, and I announced, there's a secret sale to my agents. That was secret simply because I couldn't advertise. I had no money, and I told them to only bring their very best customer. There weren't enough apartments to go around. The first people in line would grab the best apartments, and it had free maintenance for two years because I got the insurance company to say that, because they knew they had to pay the maintenance anyway. And that morning when we opened up one week hence, I woke up and went around that corner on 88th and First Avenue, and there were over 200 people in line for my 88 apartments. I sold those apartments in probably 18 minutes. I would say all cash deals. Okay. Why? Cash wasn't needed because the insurance company was giving the financing and I didn't have enough to go around. We had street fights that morning because people didn't get an apartment, but I made over a million two that morning. I paid off all my debt, and I immediately opened a second office. And that was a matter of. You could call it luck, but it was creativity. Luck and creativity merging and a need. There was a real need to sell those units. And so the seller was open to a new idea. And I think I want to point that out. What is so wonderful about a bad time is that the whole world is open to a new idea. That's what happens. So the things that you could have thought about before as a great idea, what do I do? Try them again after you have a really bad turn in the industry that you're in, and you find that people are willing to entertain new stuff. And so it's like life belongs to the smaller business person, the person who's most creative, the person who could turn things around really fast. It's not the big guys that come out of these recessions or down, down points in the lead. What it really is, it's a little guy who's hustling and reinventing themselves. And I think that is really the lesson I learned by trying to make. What was your expression? That one.

Oh, lemonade out of lemons. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, you really doubled down when others were retracting, you know, and you Said, okay, let's figure it out. And you know, a puppy sale, right? Like, so there always is a way. That's what I love about business. It really is that creativity. So what do you think that in working with so many business owners, Barbara, over the years and you know, also on Shark Tank, what do you feel are the common qualities of businesses that don't make it? I mean, you know, we talk, we're going to talk about the ones that do make it. But I also want, I'm wondering, is there commonality where you go, you know what, I just don't think they've got what it takes or what do you think that is?

There is one trait common to everyone who doesn't make it. They don't know or they are unable to get through adversity. That's what it comes down to. That's pure and simple. I'll give you an example. Dark, tight night. We make deals, then we do our due diligence. It usually takes anywhere from a month to four, sometimes five months before we actually close the deal. I get the first hint of where I'm going to lose my money every time when I see it, I hate to see it. Once I close the deal, sign the contract, I have a meeting with my new fresh entrepreneur and they come into my office or we do it remotely, where we go over their business. What are they going to do with the money? How are they going to expand their business? I'm trying to give them my absolute best help. I find that the entrepreneurs that take careful notes and ask me to repeat things. Could you repeat that one more time? Oh, what did you say to that? I know I'm going to lose my money. Okay? The ones that come in and listen to me or remotely listen to me, and then they ignore what I say and do exactly what they want. Those are the ones that make me the money. Ironically. Isn't that kind of weird? Because entrepreneurs that succeed are largely independent. They listen to everyone's advice, but in the end they do what they're their intuition or their knowledge of the business tells them to do. And so that's my hint. Okay? But on Shark Tank night, anyone who's had their product or service appear on Shark Tank is like winning the lottery. They get so much business that night and for the next two to three weeks following Shark Tank's airing. And that's wonderful. They feel terrific. The product is flying off the shelf. Everyone's a genius. It's amazing. Their families are. And then that peters down. And now they have to Keep the business going. And when the first obstacle hits, like the inventory didn't come in, they made a mistake in the engineering of their product. The guy who promised this never delivered. Their packaging's all wrong. The store won't take it. Anything that goes wrong. And I listened really carefully. And when that entrepreneur blames it on the next guy who feels sorry for themselves, I know it's over. As sure as I know my name, I don't spend any more time with them. Because anyone who plays victim never succeeds in business. And the minute you are blaming on somebody else, you're not going to succeed. My great entrepreneurs say, ah, that creep. Well, what do we do now? And they move on. You see, there's a whole different headset. Responsibility for yourself that you can control your destiny or, oh, something went wrong. My God, that wasn't fair. And it's a little pity party you have for yourself where you cease and desist your activity while you lick your wounds. And that's the kiss of death when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's interesting with all of the agents I hired over the years in the real estate business, they're all the great ones are great entrepreneurs. It's just like the entrepreneurs I partner with today. No difference. But I found, looking at my great salespeople all those years, the ones who were making 3, 4 million dollars a year when my average person was making 48,500. How do they get to make that much money when everybody has the same advertising, the same boss, the same company, the same everything? It wasn't contacts, it wasn't introductions. The only difference was when they took a hit, the great ones took less time feeling sorry for themselves. They had a way of licking off, dusting off, and getting back up. Almost like a jack in the box that jumps up and says, I'm a fool. Hit me again. Boom. And that is the mark of a great entrepreneur, which is opposite to someone who does not succeed. In my many years of experience on Shark Tank, which is the ability to feel sorry for yourself. It's poison. I can spot it a mile away. I think I said enough on that.

Yeah, well, I agree with you 100%. It really is just where you don't even have to think about it, you automatically get into action going, okay, what are we going to do about it?

What are we going to do about it? Because that's the goal of working it through. You know you're going to get to that finish line no matter what. So your focus is right there, and it helps you. Helps you Stay on course tremendously to not think you have other options, like failing, you know?

Yeah, definitely. Now, a lot of our speaking of these entrepreneurs that are like figuring it out, finding that puzzle piece, you know, in Pinnacle Global Network, we are mentoring business owners all over the world. And when this all happened, we just jumped in and really helped them strategize and pivot and all of that. And it's unbelievable what they're creating. It's just so exciting. And so they're learning new revenue stream, new ways to reach their customers, and that's what this event is all about. What are some creative ways that, you know, you're pivoting all the time in your business, but for business owners here, thinking right now, you know, how can I capitalize on some opportunities? Can you talk about that a little bit?

I have a sort of a methodology I use for myself. When business turned down for, for my current media company, I sat down and did what I lectured to all my entrepreneurs to do. And I think it's a good exercise for business owners. Make a list of every piece of business you've gotten over the last three to five years, every single piece of business. And next to it, write what the source of that business was. It is shocking to me how often business owners don't really know where their business originated because old business begets newer business, but they don't trace the stream back. I have met with entrepreneurs over all these years where they come to the conclusion that 80% of the business came from two trade shows and they haven't been at a trade show for over five years. What's wrong with that picture?

Yeah, it is. Exactly. I think sometimes we're always looking for the next thing. And we were talking about earlier, this is also about getting back to basics.

You know, of a tough time as we are now. I think it's also good to look at those streams of income and say, will they work anymore? Well, for that example, of course people aren't going to trade shows right now. And then the million dollar question of course is what do I replace it with in my business right now, a third of my income comes from endorsement deals, A third of my income comes from speeches, and a third of my income roughly thereabouts comes from social media followings, postings, things of that sort, which is endorsements of sort. What I realized the minute this crap hit, I put down my sources of income. I said, well, speeches are out the door. That's gone endorsements. Those companies aren't going to be spending money. I doubt whether that will be back. And I was able to tell in two days, I'm going to lose two thirds of my income. And I have a big staff that I have to pay for. That's a problem. Okay. And so that brings me to point 2. After realizing where your business came from, then figuring out what the heck you're going to replace it with, that is a challenge. The most important thing is to use more brains than your own. So I meet with my very talented staff. Everybody's got a different gift. Everybody's good at something else. And we brainstorm, and we brainstorm and we brainstorm. What else could we do? What could we do differently? Who's going to buy it, do you think they would do? And we try everything. It's not a time to sharpshoot where you're going to get the right answer. It's a time to like a buckshot, shoot it out, see what sticks. Give me a second. I'm talking too much. My throat goes sometimes. There we go. Sounds perfect now. Go figure.

Yes.

Okay. But I think you have to utilize your staff and keep them close and get as many ideas as you can. And it doesn't just have to be your staff. It could be other industries. Lots of people look to their own industry of, oh, what's the big guy doing better than me? What can I do like him? The big guy never has a creative answer. It's the little guys that have the creativity. The big guys have the cash. And so you look to different industries. What do they do? What could I borrow from that? Look around. Because you could steal ideas everywhere if you don't have tunnel vision at your own industry. And so I think those are the important steps to reinvent or the fashionable word, which I don't like pivot. Sometimes it means throwing out the kit, not just redressing them.

Yes.

So you really. I think those are the important steps in any down market. And I have found that it has worked very well. Very well. It's simple, easy to do.

Yeah. I love all of that. And, you know, sometimes you feel like it has to be all on our shoulders and it doesn't. There aren't people around you. Yeah. We have this incredible community. And by design, it's all different industries and all different business models, and they share strategies so that you're not doing it like everybody else. Exactly. So speaking of team, and you are such a great leader and the market is obviously changing. When it comes to the job market, what do you think are the most important things to remember moving forward when Hiring key staff members and beyond that, just keeping them motivated.

Well, I don't think through bad times and good times, it makes. There is no difference in how I hire. I have to say, it's not like I have a new trick in bad times to hire well. I think I consistently hire well, and I make sure I do. It's very easy to invite someone in. It's very hard to get rid of them. So I put a lot more effort into making sure I get the right person in the house because it's painful to get rid of somebody. So I think, number one, I always hire happy people. If their mother and father couldn't teach them to be happy, there's nothing I'm going to do that's going to make them a happy person. And with a happy person, what you get automatically, even if they have no skill set, you get a team player, someone who's willing to reach out because they're happy enough to help the next person. That's what happens. They have a group respect. Happy people don't look down on other people. They think, hey, that sounds great, let's go with it. And happy people create an environment. When you collect 2 people, 50 people, or 200 people together, all you need is one negative person to ruin the pot. That's what I've learned. And now that brings me on to beyond hiring happy people with the right attitude, much more important than the skill set. You could teach anything, anything at all. If someone has the right attitude and they have a baseline of happiness, I believe that, truly. Okay. And that's who I built my empire on. That's what I do today. I think the other side of that is the firing. I have to say I'm exceptional at firing because we all make mistakes or people change or the job description changes or the industry changes and they can't change with it. So there's lots of reasons why people who fit three years ago don't fit now. I'm particularly adept at firing people, I think, because I actually like firing people if they're negative, because I can't wait to get rid of them all right? It's kind of like they're gonna hurt my children. It's like, I got a nasty kid in the house. Let me get rid of them before they hurt my good kids, you know? And so I always look forward to firing Friday. And I always look forward to finding a complainer and saying, hey, you have a few minutes for me sometime on Friday? Oh, yes, sure. 11 o'. Clock. Good. See you then. I couldn't wait to fire them if they were hurting my team, particularly as it pertains to a sales team. And if you think I made my livelihood, I had a thousand salespeople, probably when I sold my business, probably roughly 250employees. The sales team poisoned by negativity because sales is 90% attitude, 10% acting on your attitude. And so I had to be particularly adept at recognizing a problem before it boiled. And so I think you have to in firing people, I think the key ingredient there is to be perfectly clear what you expect when you hire again, being careful on the front side. And so my job description, every salesman I ever hired was always, always the same. I never changed it. I expect you to make one sale within the first three months. If not, we can't afford to keep you. What do you think that salesperson did the day they walked in? They ran to make that sale and they knew by month three, that's 90 days out. If they couldn't make a sale, they're not going to do well in real estate sales or any sale for that matter. I think you have to think of what the profile really is in your own industry because everybody's got to sell, everybody's got a sales end, even if it's the principal is the only salesman. And I think you have to think through what that expectation is, a period of time everyone is more comfortable knowing what an expectation is, both the boss and the employee. And I think that has to be made perfectly clear. I frankly, when people couldn't produce sales for my business, 90% of the commission, salespeople I hired who couldn't produce sales, sales within three months fire themselves. I didn't really have to do it because they knew what the score was, you see. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I love that you shared that Barbara, because I do feel that people really have a hard time with this firing thing. And you know, you said within 90 days. You know, I talk to people all the time and it's been over a year or longer and hoping that that is going to turn around. And I think think that just, you know, you have permission to design how you want your business to be and who you're going to surround yourself in your life. So I love the fact that you don't tolerate the whiners and the victim mentality.

Let me mention one other thing that might be helpful, was very helpful to me. Once a salesman is on staff, I was always able to identify before the three month period pretty accurately whether they were going to do well and you know, what the Magic ingredient was besides handling failure well, because sometimes the failure doesn't happen fast enough for you to watch because they didn't put themselves out there. So they're not going to fail at anything. I found I looked for a competitive streak. If someone was competitive, I knew I had a winner. Competition is key to the makeup. The MO Of a great salesman. Even a medium grade salesperson has to be competitive by nature. If you're not competitive, it's like my. One second. I'm sorry again.

That's okay.

I'm sure this looks attractive, doesn't it? I'm coughing. Oh, my God. I can't come through the screen. Thank God. Let me get my mask on.

We're talking a lot here. I got my water going.

It's all right there. I don't know why that happens. It's been happening for two days. Oh, is that a sign? I'm reading into everything. Okay. So if you can spot a competitive gene in anybody in a sales capacity, whether it be the principal, themselves, or anyone they hire for the purpose of sales and marketing, if they don't feel competitive with who's sitting next to them, you don't got a great salesperson there. It ain't going to happen. That's my experience.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that competition, that competitive spirit lights a fire in you. You know, that really is. That moves that engine forward. So talking about teams, what is it that you feel makes a great leader? And we have a bunch of leaders here today, hundreds of leaders. But what do you feel is most important regarding leadership?

You could be a good leader. But if you said great leader. Right? Yes, Great leader. You have to be able to inspire people. You have to be able to paint a vision or job task or whatever you think is going to benefit your business and do it in a fashion that people are excited to follow you. That's called inspiration. You can lead a team. You could be a manager. I don't even like the word manager. It sounds more like containment than pushing. Right. You could be a manager and do a pretty good job keeping things in check, but you won't build an empire. To build an empire, you need to inspire people. You need for them to say, like, I'll go to that mountain with you. I'm right there, baby. Oh, there's a cliff. Oh, don't worry about it. You know, I think you need to be trusted, and I don't think that's an act. I think the dumbest person in the world knows who they can trust and who they can't it's just a vibe you get. Okay. So if you can be trusted, people will stay with you. You don't have turnover. You don't have people working against you. Yeah. Trusted is a very important trait. And what do both or particularly the inspiration leans on is your ability to communicate. A lot of people can do, but they can't communicate the doing to the next guy. And that is at the heart of all good inspiration. I think to be able to clearly say what you want, well, of course you have to know what you want. Okay. Most people in business kind of know what they want. I find they have a difficult challenge in getting other people in the right spots to affect that vision when they want it to happen. And for that, you need to get people to see the picture. Whoa. To really believe they could do it and to be willing to follow you to get that. To get to that mountaintop. So you're going to be the king or the queen of that mountain. And those are the mixture of those traits. But I think those are the most important. And it's interesting, with every one of my Shark Tank businesses that are doing so well and making a lot of money, an extra trade I might throw in there is the ability to choose a good partner. I don't think it's essential, but I had Esther Kaplan as my partner, who was the ultimate container, hiding the money on me before it ever came in. Working with the banks, extending credit lines, keeping my files in order. I'm not diminutuzinheser, whatever that word is, making it a little her at all. She was a genius at it. And I was good as the big mouth, the sales mouth, the marketing person. And I think back to all of my Shark Tank businesses, every one of those winning businesses have great partnerships at top opposite skill sets. So I think if you don't have the skill sets to expand a business or you don't have a skill set to maintain systems that repetitively happen that are key to your success or whatever your key qualities to build your business are. If you don't have certain ones, I think you can hire it, of course, but it's not the same as finding a partner who has it naturally and is going to be opposite to you in their strengths. I think that's a great way to build a business. I could have never built my Corcoran Group business without Esther Kaplan. It just wouldn't have happened. I would have had a great success, but not nearly to the degree that I had without her. She was key to the operation. She was as strong as I was with opposite skills.

Yeah, I love that. I love that you really balanced each other out with your strengths. And you also said, okay, this is my lane, and this is your lane. And you trusted her so that you could both, you know, rise the ship together. I have such an incredible team. They're all in here today. I couldn't do it without them. Every day I'm like, thank you, thank you, thank you. Many of them have been with me for years, so I get 100% what you're talking about. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about on Shark Tank. Even though you're an investor, I've heard you say that sometimes getting an investor is not always the best way to scale because you've got to give a portion of your business away. What are your thoughts on that?

A couple of things go wrong when you're thinking about investors. First of all, it's a hero from the outside. I don't believe in that. All the heroism is in yourself. And you don't know what you're capable of until your back's against a wall. Unfortunately, that's where we all get our confidence from. Going through duress, going through tough times is where we build our confidence, because we know we could do it again. So that's number one. I would have to say the second thing. Wait, I lost my thought there. What was your question? One more day.

About the investors.

Oh, yeah, the investors. Thank you. I lost actually, the main subject in my mind there.

That's okay.

Regard to the investors. Once you have an investor, two things could go wrong. Maybe more than two. But the two things that go wrong that I see in my Shark Tank businesses are the investor that invests in the business usually knows the space. They're a big cat with a lot of cash and want to get involved in something. They become the expert and they start telling you what to do. And so you have two gods to serve. Your customer, your employees, that whole business piece of which should take your full attention. And you also have to keep your investor happy. And very often those goals don't match and the investor wins. And so you get derailed in quiet ways. Before you know it, you're pleasing your investor better than you're pleasing yourself. That's number one. Okay. Secondly, on many junctures along the way, at very, very tough times, I had, people wanted to buy the lion's share of my business. They believed in me. Somehow they made an offer. I was desperate for cash, and on two occasions, I almost sold the Majority share of my business. One was to Merrill Lynch Corporation, years ago. And they were going to take over the whole real estate market. And they offered me. I could not believe it. I. I was only 30 years old at the time. $50,000 for 60% of my $50,000, I think I was making at the time. Maybe 8,000 a year. Right. I couldn't even imagine how you could count 50,000. And lucky for me, they didn't sign the contract and walked away. And within three years, my business was worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It happened again. I almost sold my business to a jeweler, a big jeweler, because I was. I really thought I was going down. I really thought I was going down. And I learned later he was just playing big shot because he wanted to sleep with me. And once that was off the table, so clearly he disappeared into the night.

Oh, my gosh.

Never sold that business. And ironically, that was about three years before I sold the Corcoran for $66 million, all cash. And you might ask, well, what was that jeweler gonna pay me for my business just a few years earlier? The purchase price we arrived at was about $350,000. Thank God. Well, thank God I didn't sleep with him. And thank God he was an ugly guy, in fact, but a lot to me. And thank God that deal didn't consummate. And I have seen so many young entrepreneurs believe they need the help and are going to get the expert help from an outsider. And I tell my entrepreneurs, because these guys, usually guys, not girls, always show up. And I always say to those my entrepreneurs, don't let that fox in your hen house.

Oh, my God.

I've seen it. I've seen it destroy, actually three businesses. Great businesses, great entrepreneurs on Shark Tank destroyed by an investor, I'm telling you. And so I always think if you could at all bootstrap your business and even slow down your growth relative to what you could afford, I'm just tremendously biased in that direction. You don't know what you're giving away when you're giving away that stock. I guess if you were a high technology business and you needed 15 engineers, millions of dollars in payroll, maybe you would have no choice. But short of that, I think you should bootstrap your own business and grow on pace with what you can afford. You're in control at least.

Yeah. What fantastic advice. I think, you know, you get into those moments where you feel desperate and it's just a moment if you can let that pass, you know, and Cinderella.

Story, you know, we all know that those are in storybooks, right? No prince running in. Not a real prince that I know of. I haven't seen one.

Yeah, well, I found one, but it took me, it took me a lot of kissing, a lot of frogs, let's just say. But I, and I do, you know, we tell our clients, just create a revenue focused business, you know, really like, you don't have to pay that back, you know, so you don't have to give your business away. You don't have to pay that, that money back.

I would agree, yes.

So what do you, you said before that you major successes have happened on the heels of failure. And we've touched on this a little bit. But I think that, you know, that is that silver lining that comes in out of it or that lesson, maybe that comes from the failure.

I would say that in the midst of any failure or fiasco or embarrassment or misjudgment or money that you just kind of pissed away and you shouldn't have pissed away because you got not enough for it or nothing at all for it. It's important to always remember right then and there, there is some opportunity. There always is an opportunity. If you don't see you're just not looking hard enough. I'll give you like, give you lots of examples. But the one that popped in my head, I remember I was in some bad time, whatever it was, and I then got out of it. And Esther and I, my partner, were thrilled. I had over $70,000 in profit after a very bad time. We clearly knew we came through the bad time. And so in my glee and with great confidence about what a great marketer I am, I decided to take all the listings we had in the company and put them on videotape. This was long before people shopped online, of course. Okay. And so I hired videographers people to do my agents makeup their hair, the right lighting boy. We were going to Hollywood is how I felt. And I announced to the entire company at a sales meeting, we are going to bring your listings to the customer. No longer do they have to stop at our offices. They could sit in the La Z Boy chair and choose an apartment. And it's going to be called Homes on Tape. Short is hot. H o t get it hot. And everybody's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had everybody pose for the photos with their contact information. And I posted the agent with their listing and the contact information on videotape. And I had one bedroom tapes, two bedrooms and three bedrooms. And we started having our Agents give them out. The problem was no one gave them out. I couldn't figure out why, you know, why? They didn't want their customer to see the other agent they might like better with their contact information. They didn't want to take the chance. And so it was dead on arrival. I had spent 70, some odd thousand dollars on producing those tapes. I had thousands of them. Thousands. And I'm sitting at them thinking, I'm embarrassed to admit that this is a failure. My next sales meeting is coming. I don't want to admit defeat. And by luck, my husband was a navy captain, a weekend warrior in the part time Navy. And he played war games in South Korea every year. And this year he came back and said, we played war games against the North Koreans on this new government thing called the Internet. How did that work in real time? It seemed real. We were blowing out their harbors, blah, blah. He's all excited. I'm like, what's that? And I immediately put all those homes on tape on the Internet. We had two sales in the first week. Boom, boom. It was like, whoa. I had almost four years playing on the Internet, doing virtual tours, different kinds of photography, different ways of showing listings. Four years before anyone in the industry even knew it existed. Had I not been looking for a way to save face on my mind all the time. I got to do something good with this. I've got to do something good with this. There's more. I didn't want to be mortified. You want to be back? Got to do something good with this. I would not have listened or found the solution. And I learned by that point I was already established in business. I had already learned that there's always a flip side to everything. Always. You just have to stay in the game and look for it. I don't know if you've ever heard about that kid dropped into a big square room, dropped down the basement and he gets depressed and kills himself. The next brother goes down in the basement. The problem was it was filled with horse manure. And the second kid says, what are you? So the parents. What are you so happy about? The kid says, I know down here somewhere, there's a pony. Well, that's a terrible. I can't tell a joke, but get it. I'll never tell. I get it, I get it. My lesson. Okay, never mind.

Oh my God, that's hysterical. I am terrible at telling jokes because I always really laugh before the punchline and blow it. So laughed at my punchline. Yeah, I can't tell a joke.

Okay, sorry. About that. Yeah.

But you know what? This kind of leads me into another thing I love about you, Barbara, is that you're fun. You're fun, and people are so serious. And I know you brought a lot of fun into your business. I've heard you tell stories about that. Can you just tell me why you feel like it's important to bring fun into business and maybe how that helped your business growth?

In our industry, we were the innovator. We came up with all the ideas first, tried everything first. From the beginning to the end of my career, we were always the innovator. People looked to us to see what we were doing. My competitors celebrated the night I closed my deal. They all got together and toasted me that they got rid of me. They didn't like me very much. Okay. Which is I like to be liked. But I just decided early on my competitors don't like me. It must be a compliment, right? But here is what I want to say about not being liked by the outside. It's okay, but you want to be loved by the people on the inside. How do you get people to love you? You can make their jobs very nice. You can give them a beautiful office, which I always did. They were more like small spas than anything else. They had manicurists two days a week, shoeshine boys one day a week. I mean, massages at the desk another day a week. So I spoiled my kids rotten, which is what I wanted to do, or at least to the degree that I had the money to spend on them. Okay? But what I did for that team and what built the culture of the company and what made it a creative shop was we had fun. I never had a good idea of my office. I never was at a management meeting and had my exceptional manager say, here's a whole new way of doing stuff. Never happened, but get everybody out, get them drunk, get them wearing outfits that they never thought they'd be in, because everything was a costume party in my shop. You never just wore a nice dress. You dressed as something. Get them doing bizarre things that they'd never do for themselves, like riding elephants and whatever other big animals I could get. Horses, race horses, up and down, jumping on the back of motorcycle gangs, whatever I could get them to do that they bragged to their family and my competitors, interestingly, about how much fun did we have? That not only created a innovative culture, it also made my recruiting very easy. Because why would you work for the next competitor if you get the same commission, spread, split the same. The same, relatively. The Same office or in a similar location, although mine were better. Everything's pretty much the same. Similar advertising. But if you came to the Corcoran Group, you get all of that, and you could have a blast. And it was in the partying and the fun that the culture was created. Without it, we could have never had succeeded to that degree. With all of my Shark Tank investments to date, they have those cultures. They have a ball. They've learned from me. They've passed it forward, and they succeed because of it. It's not an extra. It's not like, oh, we have extra money. Let's have some fun. No. When I was selling my business, I was a little nervous about one point with Esther. When the acquirer was combing through my books, I said, you know, I'm a little nervous. When they see how much money we blow on fun stuff, you think they'll think badly of us and maybe not close the deal. And she said, well, how much money do you think we're blowing on fun stuff, Barbara? And I said, 30%. And she said, no, it's 1:1. I think it was 1/4 or 1/5 of 1% of our budget. I'm like, you're kidding. We should party more. I was shocked at how little it costs. So it's not an extra. It's an essential part of building a business and a culture, especially if you want to have a house filled with innovators always bubbling with ideas. You have to have fun. I think you have to have alcohol, honestly. And you have to spend enough time to create that fun. And, my God, if you're not a fun individual, and I am. So it was easy for me. I love doing it. You can find the drunk in your office who knows how to fun and assign him the budget and have him plan the whole thing. Because many of my best times were planned by other people toward the end because I just couldn't keep up on it anymore. Yeah. So fun is key. It's not an extra. And I think corporations are so silly not to use that.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's. You know, we have so much fun with our team. We just crack up. We go to Disneyland together. We do all kinds of fun stuff.

Well, next time you should go dress as Mickey Mouse. You'll triple your fun. Trust me on that one.

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, the costume thing, we need to get down, so. Melissa, are you listening to that? It's costumes. Next time it's required.

Or better than that. I'm sorry, if you don't mind me putting my Two cents. You should dress as a character that Disney does not represent. That's who you more fun people will hate you. They'll have a ball. Hey, I went to Disney world with my five sisters about 12 years ago. We dressed as nuns. We had a ball. You try that one too.

Oh, my God, that is so hysterical. Barbara. Oh, my gosh. All right, so as we kind of wind down here, just a couple more questions. Now, you lead a very busy life. I know you're from here, you're on to all kinds of of stuff. And so how the heck do you take care of yourself? You know, you're obviously in good shape, you've got lots of energy, you seem to love what you do. But what are like some non negotiables for you that are really important to take care of yourself.

Well, I cheat on the good shape. I naturally have an easy body and it's really unfair. Like my husband puts on weight by looking at dessert. I could circles around and don't put on any weight so that I just have a gene that I sometimes feel guilty, but I'm happy I have it. But what I do do for my sanity, you know, so much is in your heads. I probably consistently do three things. One, I pull weeds. I could go into a garden and have so many things on my mind. Things I can't work out get me pulling weeds for about an hour and a half. I have all my solutions. Don't know why it works that way. It's like, ah, I get all my problems. It's the most relaxing thing in the world. Much better than a massage. I'm also an advocate of hot baths. I boil myself in the morning for two minutes. I boil myself again at night before I go to bed. Somehow for me, that I don't know what it does. It switches everything. It's like turning a page in a book. So that's important. And then the other thing in the fun category again is I always have my vacations planned well in advance. And I'll tell you why. Because when you're busy, I don't care what you do. You could spend five times more time on your work than you actually do. There's always going to be stuff you could spend time on. I can work very, very hard. Harder than anybody, I think, and consistently so. But I must know I'm going to have a blast. Six weeks out. So I planned a vacation every six weeks from the day I started my business. But I didn't have the money to go anywhere. I went to Jones's beach by subway. And once I had the money to go to great places, I was like, where do I go next? But not only is it the week or 10 day vacation on a consistent basis, I got out of that. It was my looking forward to it. Half the joy in anything in life when you think about it is looking forward to it. Not the actual having it, but the looking forward to it. And I had all those weeks to enjoy looking forward to it. And as someone who was the rainmaker in the business and needed to get the most of the lion's share of the business in initially, I taught my agents to do the same thing, to plan their vacations well in advance. Because it was a 24, 7 job for my top agents. And I convinced them that if they were putting the time in their books in advance, they would make more deals. And it happened every time. There's something that the customer can feel, the vibe when you're pulling out of the gate soon, you wrap your business up, they feel that they can sense they're going to leave you. We had more closings because of vacations than by working hard. And I do believe that's true of every kind of business. You're stupid not to plan your vacations well in advance. Those are the three things I've been consistent on. I've tried a lot, lot of different stuff, but those, yeah, those three always deliver for me and that's why I consistently do them.

Wow, that's awesome. I take baths too. I haven't been doing the pulling weeds, but I would imagine that that's quite the release.

If you don't have a garden or if you do it for your neighbor, they'll probably say yes.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, last year I committed to taking a week off every single month. And I stuck to it. And it was our biggest year and I felt so energized. And it also, you know, I think my team just was like, yay, you know, now like she's gone, we can like, you know, because they're so creative and they really stepped up as they do. So thank you for sharing that. And as we wrap up, what Any last words of wisdom that you would like to share, Barbara?

Well, I never have an answer to anything like that because it's such a wide range. Let me think a moment. With the coronavirus going on right now, I would say that very important not to wait it out. A lot of people waiting it out and assuming business will resume as usual, it ain't going to ever come back. Okay. Players will change industries will change. The rate of hiring will change. What people are expected to do will change. Where people work will change. I think it's smart to really think about what could be the potential changes out there and what can I do about it? Now that, coupled with one thought I've had to remind myself of over the many, many weeks we've been locked up here in our apartment here, York City, which is a beautiful apartment, but I don't care how beautiful it is, it's still locked up, you know, like a luxury jail. Right, okay. But I think I've. I've had almost, I don't want to say a low grade depression. I'm not a depressed person at all. But I have these sad moments that just feel sad, saddened. And what I've learned to do is focus on what I could control and let it go. What I could. So if I can't control something that's bothering me, I just let it go. I say I can't control it. I'm just not going to worry about it. It's not my problem. Let me focus on what I can control that I could do something about. And so I've tried to stay focused on that. It's helped me a lot somehow. Helped me a lot, you know, and last resort, if I just feel low on energy and I never run out of energy, you know, I think, I think what I do is I get right up and I do about 30 jumping jacks. And somehow it helps me. I go 1, 2, 3. And so that's been helping me keep my energy up. Because I do find in a waiting period, it's not natural for a personality like me. I'm a doer. So to be made to wait is my worst punishment. And so I get up while I'm waiting and do those jumping jacks. Somehow that helps me. Shakes it out. Okay, Stupid way to end it. But then there you have it, Jumping jacks.

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