Barbara Corcoran's credits include straight D's 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: She borrowed $1,000 and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City. Over the next 25 years Barbara would parlay that $1,000 loan into a $5 billion real estate business, building the largest and best-known brand in the business.
Corcoran is the author of the best seller "Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business!" and host of top business podcast "Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran."
Corcoran is a motivational and inspirational speaker. She is a frequent small business and real estate contributor on every major network. Corcoran has been an investor/Shark for the past nine seasons on ABC's four-time Emmy award winning show, Shark Tank, investing in over 80 businesses to date. Follow Barbara on Twitter and Instagram @BarbaraCorcoran.
How do you turn a $1,000 loan into a five billion dollar business? According to self-made real estate empress and TV personality Barbara Corcoran, you do it by learning how to fail well. She tells the story of how, armed with a $1000 loan and her own gritty determination, she quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City and turned that company into a multi-billion dollar business. She describes what it’s like to go from a tiny start up to New York City’s largest real estate company to a major TV personality as the real estate contributor to the NBC TODAY Show and a shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, and how she overcame the many obstacles along the way. This is a highly motivational and hugely entertaining success story.
Ms. Corcoran, who led 1,000 + brokers at The Corcoran Group, New York’s largest real estate company, is an expert in the art of leading a team to success. She knows exactly what it takes to create a thriving workplace and how to develop a winning team from a diverse group of employees from Gen Y to Gen X to Baby Boomers. From hiring the right people and firing the wrong people to bringing fun into the workplace and establishing an atmosphere that breeds innovation, she shares her unique and winning strategies in how to get people moving on the path to professional and personal greatness.
Innovation may be the single most important key to success in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Barbara Corcoran is known for having built the most successful real estate business in New York City, and now she reveals the unconventional strategies she used to do it: how to create an image bigger than the reality; how to use the press to get free publicity; and how a little savvy and a lot of guts can turn you into the leader in your field. She shares her innovative ideas, insights, and anecdotes on building a thriving business and a successful brand in today’s marketplace.
No one knows more about reinvention than D-student turned real estate maven turned TV personality Barbara Corcoran. She first ‘reinvented’ herself when her business partner and boyfriend ran off with her secretary. He swore she’d never succeed without him and, although she believed him for a moment, she ultimately triumphed by creating The Corcoran Group. When she sold that business thirty years later for $66 million, she was surprised to learn that simply riding off into the sunset wasn’t for her. Reinventing herself again at age 55 turned out to be a daunting challenge—she had trouble picking out what to wear in the morning, let alone picking up the phone to ask for what she wanted, she was so unsure of who she was. Today, as a shark on the new ABC reality show Shark Tank and the real estate contributor to NBC’s TODAY Show, she is a walking, talking success story whose star is still on the rise. And she happily shares her failures, her successes, and the obstacles she learned to overcome in an inspiring story that will kindle a flame in the heart of anyone searching to come into their own as a mature, powerful individual.