Barbara Corcoran on Building Wealth from Nothing: Failure, Confidence and Getting Back Up

High-Level Overview

Mel Robbins interviews Barbara Corcoran, the real estate entrepreneur and original Shark Tank investor, about how she went from a crowded two-bedroom flat in New Jersey and a classroom where she was called stupid to building a New York real estate company she sold for $66 million. Corcoran, now in her mid-seventies, tells the story through its setbacks: undiagnosed dyslexia, 22 jobs, a business partner and boyfriend who left her for her secretary, an expensive marketing flop, and being dropped from Shark Tank before filming began. Her theme is that each of those rejections came just before something good, and that the people who win are simply the ones who get back up and keep trying.

The tone is brisk, funny and blunt, with Robbins as an admiring and energetic host who frequently pauses to underline a point. Corcoran is self-deprecating about her insecurities and unsentimental in her advice. The conversation flows from her childhood and early career into practical guidance on choosing a boss, leading a team, asking for a raise, starting a business and judging people, and closes with her views on women, competition, generosity and starting again at any age.

The Discussion Explores:

• Replacing the negative tape in your head, and counting the years you have left
• A childhood that was poor, crowded, competitive and happy, and a mother who named each child's gift
• Dyslexia and being underestimated as hidden advantages
• What 22 jobs taught her, and why she spent her first commission on a coat
• Being told she would never succeed alone, and where her confidence really comes from
• The videotape failure that put her on the internet ahead of her rivals
• Choosing a good boss, leading people, firing complainers and asking for a raise
• How she judges entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, and why she never thought of herself as a woman in business

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Changing the tape and counting the years

Asked what she most wants listeners to take away, Corcoran says: "you're far more capable than you think you are". She has never met anyone who was not. She adds that feeling stuck is normal and that she feels it four or five times a month. Her first tool is to change the tape in your head. Hers used to tell her she was overstating and could not get there. She deliberately replaced it, every time it started, with "Barbara, you're incredible." She did not believe it at first, but repetition made it stick.

To anyone who feels too old, she offers an exercise: count the years you have left and ask how many more versions of yourself you can fit into them. She plans to live to about 105. When she sold her company at 46 she thought she had sold the golden goose, "But then I realized I was a golden goose." Each new version has to suit who she is at that point; she would not build another real estate firm now. After the sale she tried cooking, art and a PR company before becoming a real estate expert on television, which felt right. Her rule is to get moving, because ideas arrive in motion and not at a desk. On failure she says, "the bigger the failure I had, the bigger the upside", provided you stay around long enough to see the other side.

Growing up one of ten

Corcoran describes a childhood that was very poor but happy. Her mother had ten children, and she jokes that her father was the eleventh and hardest to manage. Home was crowded and competitive, with little parental attention to go round, which she thinks explains her lifelong need for attention. Her mother ran the household with systems, so the children were always well dressed, well fed and celebrating holidays.

Competing for attention made her a good talker and entertainer, and she believes she became the most fun boss in the world as a result. Her mother also announced each child's gift at birth: one brother, she says, was declared a dancer and became one. When Barbara came home crying because a nun had called her stupid, her mother told her not to worry because she had a wonderful imagination and would use it to fill in the blanks. Corcoran credits her mother with her own ability to see what people would be good at. She never had a mentor, she says, but she had her mother.

Dyslexia and the advantage of being underestimated

Corcoran learned she was dyslexic only as an adult, when her son was diagnosed. Robbins says the same happened to her. "I think dyslexia made me successful." she says. It made her see the world differently and overprepare for everything: she will spend seven hours getting ready for a one-hour speech because she never wants to be caught not knowing an answer. Daydreaming through six hours of school a day trained her imagination, and unable to shine in writing, she became quick and funny in speech.

Being underestimated helped her too. In a New York property business owned by well-connected men, she says, none of the big players watched her for about ten years. She hired the people nobody else wanted, including gay men at a time when she says others would not hire them, and built a loyal team in which everyone had something to prove. She tried marketing ideas her rivals had not considered and caught up before they noticed.

Twenty-two jobs and one coat

Corcoran thinks it is a mistake for young people to decide early what they want to be. Her 22 jobs taught her what she was good and bad at. As a waitress she could charm anyone. As a nurse's aide she mixed up the numbers on temperature charts and learned to stay away from figures. At a hot dog stand she outsold the other kids. The conclusion was that she was great at sales. She says she knew nothing about real estate and never really learned much about it, but she knew how to make people comfortable with a choice they already wanted to make. Good selling, in her view, is being genuine.

Her first commission cheque was $340, and she spent $330 of it on a coat from Bloomingdale's. She wore it for six years. She insists it was the best thing she ever bought, "Because it made me feel like who I wanted to be." From her first day she pictured herself as the queen of New York real estate.

Dumped, doubted and where confidence comes from

At 23, working in a diner, Corcoran met a charming customer who became her boyfriend and lent her the $1,000 that started the business. Seven years later he left her and married her secretary. When she split the company and walked out, he told her, "you'll never succeed without me". She now thinks he said it in anger, but she is grateful, because through every later crisis, including a stock market crash and 9/11, the memory pushed her to find another way to stay in business.

Her account of confidence is unusual. Successes never built it, she says, and most of what she tried in real estate flopped. What made it solid was this: "I knew I could outwork and out-try anyone", and she knew that if she fell she would stand back up.

Her costliest failure was putting all her listings on videotape, which consumed her first $77,000 of profit and which nobody handed out. That weekend her husband mentioned the internet. She put the listings online on Monday, registered her competitors' web addresses, and says she sold two apartments to buyers in London within a week. She had nearly two years' head start, and moved from about twelfth place in the market to around third.

Bosses, leaders, complainers and raises

Corcoran lists her own strengths as judging people, marketing and salesmanship, and advises building a career around what you are naturally good at. Asked for the most valuable skill for someone who has lost a job, she mentions technology and AI, then says something matters more: "you shouldn't be choosing what job you want, you should be looking for a good person to work for". To assess a boss, ask about the people who work for them and listen for whether the boss works for those people. A boss tells you what to do; a leader gets you to believe in the dream and speaks genuinely about why it is good for you.

In an industry she says has about 60 percent annual turnover, she claims nobody left her firm unless she fired them, because she constantly asked what they needed and where they wanted to go. The one thing she will not tolerate: "If you're a complainer, I get rid of them." She calls complaining a cancer that spreads.

To ask for a raise, write the list of what you were hired to do beside the list of what you actually do, present both, and name a specific amount. She says that among roughly a thousand people at her company, women asked her for a raise only twice in 15 years, while men asked constantly. Do not quote average salaries, and do not accept that there is no budget.

Starting a business and judging founders

With no money or connections, Corcoran says, start online, where you can sell a drawing of a product before you make it. She treats every conversation as an interview for what a person might be good at. Business ideas come from asking, in everyday life, whether there is a better way to do something. The worst advice she got was her mother's suggestion to wait a year and build a résumé. Her view of planning: "But you don't have to get it right. You just have to get it going."

She was hired for Shark Tank and then dropped for another woman before filming. She emailed the producer to say that her best luck had always followed rejection and asked to compete for the seat, and got it. She says she was later told that none of the men turned down for the other seats had written to object.

On the show she evaluates the person and largely ignores the pitch. Pitches run about an hour and a half in real time, and she uses it to look for someone with something to prove. "I never invest in rich kids." Her private test is whether she would trust the founder to hold her baby. Entrepreneurs, she says, enjoy risk and bounce back like a jack-in-the-box. Three months after a deal she asks what has gone wrong, and loses faith in those who blame someone else.

Women, competition and generosity

Corcoran says the biggest challenge for a successful woman is home life. Her advice is to pick the right partner and to separate work and family strictly. She says her second husband kept her grounded, and that separate bedrooms brought romance back.

In business she says she never once thought of herself as a woman: "I thought of myself as a competitor, just like a man." Being ignored became fuel, not grievance. She says women climb the whole mountain and then credit the team, while men claim the summit halfway up, and urges women to open their mouths. She also tells how, early on, she visited a rival's office in a wig and took copies of its forms, only for the owner to phone and offer to show her everything. It taught her that generous people are confident people.

Conclusion

Corcoran's playbook is short. Change what you say to yourself, find out what you are good at by trying many things, choose the people you work for and with carefully, start before you are ready, and treat rejection as the moment just before the good part. Her confidence rests on knowing she will get up again, not on any record of wins. She admits it can sound like cheerleading, but she offers it as a description of how her own life worked. Her parting line: "Nobody's in control of you but you."

This is a summary of "The Secret to Building Wealth from Nothing (It's Not What You Think) with Barbara Corcoran" from The Mel Robbins Podcast, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.