Barbara Corcoran: Business on Edge

culled from:wobi.com

How does a teenage, pig-tailed girl from a low-income family in Edgewater, New Jersey turn into one of New York’s most powerful real-estate moguls? By being great at failing, and using the simple lessons that her mother taught her while living alongside her nine other siblings in a cramped apartment and applying them to business. Barbara Corcoran, bestselling author and featured "Shark" on ABC´s Shark Tank, is a woman on a mission with the creativity, guts, and gall to turn a $1,000 loan from a boyfriend into a real-estate empire later sold in 2001 for $66 million.

Her keys to success? In the following!

First and foremost: Have fun. Actually, she almost demanded it from her more than 1,000 employees as former CEO of The Corcoran Group. As well as including manicures, shoe shines and massages in the office (“almost like a spa”, as she explains it) she cultivated the imagination outside office hours with drag-themed office parties and summer picnics disrupted by all-female motorcycle gangs. Sounds like fun, right?

Another life-changing realization from a girl from the other side of the river: in business, perception creates reality. The face and persona you demonstrate is what people perceive you are, and almost indefinitely becomes who you will be. With her first $348 paycheck, Corcoran went to Bergdorf Goodman and spent it all on an eccentric, fur-trimmed coat. She may have looked a little ridiculous, but when she put that coat on and had a die-hard attitude with clients, it took her very far.

Be great at failing. Corcoran says that one of her greatest strengths is being great at failing. In high school she didn’t get the best grades in the class. However, she learned to always overcompensate in order to show everyone else just how smart she is. Corcoran went out of her way to over prepare, and made what she saw as a weakness into one of her greatest strengths. As an entrepreneur, failures will come at you left and right. However, if you can learn from them and over exaggerate to turn them into a strength, then that is when you will really learn to be successful.

Interested to learn more about Barbara Corcoran? We are pleased to announce that she will be giving a full-day seminar on successful entrepreneurship on October 4th in New York City, with an exclusive panel from the creators of successful start-ups: Heath Hall, Will Pearson, Brett Thompson, and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson. Learn more here!