Barbara Corcoran: Turning $1,000 to $1 Billion!
Guests: Barbara Corcoran
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
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What I would love to do is call someone to my office on Friday.
I love firing people on Friday.
Barbara, go back in the house!
My next guest is one of the biggest names in real estate, a successful entrepreneur and star of a hit TV show.
Now the female titan is getting some heat.
The minute a woman cries, you're giving away your power.
Harvard is definitely over the top.
If I wasn't dyslexic and I didn't have a hard time in school, I don't think I would have been successful.
I think I had 22 jobs before I started my own business.
Every person I meet is in real estate in New York.
So how do you become the best?
I was competing with the old boys network, and they were asleep at the wheel.
Nobody was thinking of new ideas in real estate.
I would think of the greatest bullshit to create publicity.
Did I manipulate them?
I played my cards.
Everything I've done in my life has been one long attempt to show the world that I'm not stupid.
Ramon Simone.
He was my boyfriend at the time, and he offered to loan me $1,000 to start a business with him.
He was my 51% business.
He ran off with my secretary the seventh year we were in business.
He said, you'll never succeed without me.
You know, insult can really be a wonderful motivator.
I knew I was going to succeed.
I had to, just because I had to show him that he was wrong.
If you're driven by these unhealthy insecurities, you need to go and see a shrink.
I'm afraid to see a shrink.
Why?
Why?
Well, you ask good questions.
Damn you.
I had an issue.
I felt...
We always start this conversation in the same place on this podcast because it seems to be inescapable that the earliest context of our lives
seems to shape us in a way that then changes the trajectory of who we are, but also molds our character and really like hones our motivation.
So my question for you to start is, what is that context from your earliest years that I need to understand to understand you?
First off, I'd say competition.
I was one of 10 children.
We, of course, only had two parents to share.
We were in very tight quarters, a two-bedroom, and just to get the attention of a parent was very hard to do.
So I think everyone in my family, certainly myself, grew up very competitive, competitive for attention.
Competed to do something better than the next kid.
And what also came with it, we grew up in a team.
So we never knew what it was like to be alone.
My idea of doing anything is who's with me.
Who's with me?
And I think we all, I shouldn't speak to everyone in my family, but I'll speak just for myself now.
I think I'm phenomenal at building a team, but it's second nature to me.
It was so easy for me to think of who would go with who, who wouldn't go with who, who would get along, who had the right task.
I could just size somebody up.
really fast and make a great tight team.
And I don't think that would have happened if I didn't grow up in a very crowded household looking for more attention and competing.
That ability to suss people out and understand them, you're saying that came from having nine siblings?
I certainly think it did, yeah, because you see all kinds of dynamics when you have a crowded household.
So you know who the leaders are on what category.
You know who's going to squeal to the parents.
You know who's going to shut up.
You know who can do your work for you when you don't want to do it yourself.
You know who you could snow.
You develop all the talents to get life in a form that you want it in.
And you come out of the household at 18 years old with a lot of skills that other kids really haven't had the opportunity to do.
What about the role of your, or sort of the influence of your mother and father?
Oh, I was, thank God, I had a mother and father who loved us.
I think that's the most important gift in life.
It makes you somewhere deep inside secure if you feel loved.
And I had two parents who loved me, you know.
And my mother was a phenomenal role model.
I never saw her sleep.
She worked 24-7.
She just never sat down.
I don't know even when she slept.
I've never seen her go to bed ever in my life.
And my father worked two jobs his whole life to support us.
So we were very much influenced by each parent as needing to work hard.
I mean, we were all having jobs when we were 11 years old.
I think I had 20.
22 jobs before I started my own business because we were out working to contribute to the family.
And think about the life skills you get outside a household when you're working young.
I don't think anybody ever has any job where they didn't learn something about themselves.
So even though when I went out into the workforce, when I started my business at 23, I may have looked 23, but inside I felt like I was 53 based on experience.
And so there was nothing naive about me at that point.
I had had already an awful lot of experience.
When I was reading through your story, I read that your father struggled with work and struggled with, I think, having a boss.
He certainly did.
And he set up the pattern that we all share in my family.
Nine out of the ten kids have their own business.
My father was a printing press foreman and a very good worker.
But he didn't like someone telling him what to do.
So he would regularly come home, sit at the dinner table, and tell us he was fired from his job.
It was a regular event.
We all asked him, tell us a story.
And it was the same story.
He would basically...
He said, I told Mrs.
Stein we're going to shove the job where the sun don't shine.
And we'd all clap for him and say, Dad, our hero.
And my mother, of course, would not even know how we were going to be fed until he found a new job.
But he was our hero.
And so when we grew up, even though he never worked for himself, the fact of the matter is we knew we wanted to work for ourselves.
We didn't want to work for a boss.
And honestly, I...
I never had a boss I liked, even though I had so many.
And I'm sure they were perfectly fine people.
But I didn't like the fact that I wasn't the boss.
It was clear to me.
Your father drank sometimes.
Yes, he did drink sometimes.
And I'll tell you how that played a role in our family.
He was a social drinker.
So he was probably the best father in the world, played with us, was our playmate.
We adored him, everything he did.
But then when we went out to a party, which wasn't that often, a family party, he would drink too much.
And he would come back, and he was a different person.
He was a gorilla.
And we all feared him.
What that does is it makes you very fond of control.
When you're with a parent who drinks, I think as a child, you never really feel like you're in control of things because you don't know when the lion might come out.
And so it made us insecure and very fond of control.
And I'm a control freak.
I like to control everything I do.
And I credit my dad with that.
I don't want any curveballs or surprises.
The way that he spoke to your mother sometimes, it seems from reading throughout your story and the person you went on to be, seemed to be pretty consequential to how you did respond to men who would...
Talk down to you in your career?
God, you do your research.
Good for you.
Really.
That's a nuance, but good for you.
I'm not my best if a man talks down to me.
Credit my father with that.
Because I adored my mother so much.
There was nothing to talk down to my mother about.
But when he was drinking, he would talk down to my mother.
And I hated him for it.
And it scars you so deeply that I'll never get rid of that.
So if a man actually dismisses me or talks down to me, particularly in business,
I'm at my best.
It's like, oh, no, you're not going there.
I get like this iron rod through my soul.
Showing someone that they're wrong is probably not the best motivation, I've got to believe.
Probably not a healthy way to be, and you probably need to shrink on that one.
But it certainly works well in business, I think.
It pushes you and makes sure that you make sure that things work out.
I really resonate with that because as I've talked about probably too much on this podcast, my mother and father had a very loud way to communicate, to say the least.
What a lovely way of putting it.
I've become more and more like diplomatic with how I frame that.
But a loud way of communicating.
And I learned that.
As I stood there as a little kid and watched my mother shouting at my dad, when I got older, my response to being shouted at was the response I always wish I'd seen in my dad.
Oh.
Which was like, run and don't take it.
Ah.
So when you were saying that, I was wondering if you could relate in the sense of when a man puts you down because you saw your mother be put down in such a way.
Your response is to...
Oh, to brace up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Every time, brace up.
And most importantly, prove his assessment of me wrong.
Did your mother, how did she respond?
I have to actually think.
I think my mother was so busy.
Making sure my father was safe to his children, that I think she was just making sure we were safe all the time in those instances.
And it's kind of crazy.
You know, you figure it out.
I mean, the next morning my dad would wake up and he was the most popular guy in the neighborhood, taking every kid in the neighborhood out baseball playing, teaching them how to play tennis.
He was everybody's favorite father.
And only the night before my mother was hiding us.
So it was kind of an odd dynamic.
She was hiding you.
Well, hiding us because she didn't want my father to have his wrath on any of his children, you know.
So she was protecting us, kind of separating us out.
Wrath is a strong word.
Wrath is a strong word.
I mean, wrath is, it could be, you know, just angry words can be so damaging.
You know, whatever.
It's weird.
You're making me feel sad.
I guess you're supposed to, right?
But it's so sad, you know, it's so sad, addiction, because it brings out the very worst in an individual.
And the traits my dad had.
Wonderful father growing up, just wonderful.
We couldn't hope for a better father.
That he was so good that you forgave him for the bad.
You really did as a kid.
Because it's, oh, good dad's back.
Oh, good dad's back.
But again, I said to you earlier, I think it leaves the scars of insecurity with children.
Because you don't know if you get the lady of the lion when the door opens.
Who are we going to get now?
So it keeps you on edge.
When we think about addiction, we see it as like a manifestation of pain.
Yes.
It is of sorts.
§02Transcript — part 2
Is that relevant to what you observed in your father in hindsight?
No, I think with my father, it was honestly entirely due to too much pressure on one man.
Think about it.
He worked two jobs.
He washed trucks every night through the night because he could wash them fast and sleep a little.
Then he'd go to his day job in the morning.
He had three children by the time he was 23.
He had seven children by the time he was 30.
And he was a workman.
And he was supporting us, trying to make us happy, trying to share his time with us as best he could, which he really did a great job.
I think it was just too much pressure for a young man of what he signed up for.
I think it was hard.
I mean, it wasn't ever assured with us as children that we would necessarily get groceries, you know.
So, and he felt ashamed of that, like he should be the provider.
But it didn't stop him from quitting the job the next week when the boss told him what to do.
So it's really a shame my dad didn't have his own business.
I think he would have been phenomenal in his own business.
All of his kids did except for one, and they're all hugely successful.
So I feel like he just didn't have the affordability of starting his own business, you know.
What role did the lack of money in your household have on shaping your view on money?
Interesting enough, very little.
Really?
What was great about my mother is she never worried about money.
Now, here's a woman who should have worried about money.
And my dad should have worried about money.
But I remember when I had many junctures along the way where I thought I'd be going out of business at the 11th hour.
I tried everything, didn't think I'd have any more angles to work where I could stay in business another month.
And I remember in one of those dark times, my mother called up.
She said, you sound distracted.
I said, well, honestly, Mom, I think I'm going out of business.
And on Monday's sales meeting, I'm actually writing a speech to say goodbye and how thankful I am.
And she said, don't worry about money.
It's an awful waste of time.
And, you know, I stopped worrying about money when she said it.
I thought of a new idea, and it kept us in business another two months.
My mother's attitude toward money was it was meant to be spent.
You know, as a kid, I guess I would have liked to have a new coat versus get the hand-me-downs.
You know, that's always better for a girl to feel like she looks pretty.
Okay.
But, you know, we were pretty much a happy bunch.
And so money didn't weigh in so far as you're happy.
And also my parents never measured anyone by money.
They never had a comment about who's rich, who's not rich, who has what.
It was just not even on their radar.
So it was really about my mother's mantra, supported by my father when he was fine, was kindness.
How kind can you be to the neighbor?
What could you do for the lady down the street?
And we all were raised on that.
And as a result of it, we felt the satisfaction from helping out, even though we didn't have more money to help out, just doing nice things for people.
And so money was not really on the radar, honest to God.
Yeah.
What about school?
How was...
Oh, school sucked.
School is tough on kids that can't learn.
I was one of those kids, you know, myself and my two brothers.
The other kids were A students.
But we just couldn't read.
We couldn't write.
We couldn't learn.
And what happens to a kid when you're in a school situation is you judge yourself.
Based on school grades, what else do you have?
Someone could say she's such a nice girl.
Well, that might sound good.
But if you're getting all Fs, you feel terrible.
You just feel terrible.
And so your sense of self, I think, is formed very much by how good a student you are in all school systems.
And it shouldn't be because it's just one kind of intelligence, of course, but it is that way when you're a student.
You sum yourself up based on whether you could get good grades or not.
It's as simple as that.
Were you bullied in school?
No, not at all.
I was too quiet to be bullied.
You know, I was quiet and lovely.
And that's what the Sisters of Charity always told my parents.
She's not very smart, but she's quiet and she's lovely.
Quiet and lovely.
I heard it my whole life.
And I was.
I never said a word because I didn't have the confidence to say a word.
I wasn't going to speak up and be found out.
And those aren't the kids that were bullied.
The reason I asked about the question about being bullied is because I know that you're dyslexic.
And often, especially in that day and age, we didn't understand dyslexia.
So we just thought those kids were dumb.
Yeah.
Did you ever feel that kind of criticism from your peers or your teachers?
From the teachers, yes.
I had one teacher in third grade that really gave me a label that stuck with me until I got out of high school.
She said to me, if you don't learn to read, you'll always be stupid.
And she said the word stupid with such disdain.
That was the first time I really heard that word.
Before that, no one told me I was stupid.
Stupid.
That's what's wrong with me.
I'm stupid.
And that's when I got quiet.
That's when I just shut up.
I never talked again in school because I didn't want to be called on to read out loud.
I mean, for me, my idea of hell on earth was being told to read out loud, which was typically how you learn to read those days.
You go up and down the aisles, your turn to read.
I mean, nothing was worse than me going, the, the, the, the, the, the, them, and all the kids laughing and snickering.
So I wouldn't call that bully.
I mean, I was a show.
I was a show.
So I guess I would have laughed if I was them too.
But it's so painful when that happens because it takes your confidence and demolishes it.
But thank God, thank God we all worked.
Thank God I worked by 11.
Because every job I had, I did a great job.
I used my mouth.
I didn't have to write.
I didn't have to read.
I could do any job.
And people always told my mother what a great worker I was.
I was proud.
So, you know what?
I think in hindsight, if I wasn't dyslexic and I didn't have a hard time in school, I don't think I would have been successful, believe it or not.
Because I think everything I've done in my life has been one long attempt to show the world that I'm not stupid.
So I'm driven because I'm always...
There's a piece of me that always thinks I might not be smart.
I mean, I know it's bizarre because I'm smart, but in an insecure situation, I doubt myself sometimes.
But I've learned to read.
Replace the tape.
I don't have Sister Stella Marie in my head anymore telling me I'm stupid.
I have a tape of my own telling me I'm incredible.
I'm beautiful.
Boy, you could do this.
This is nothing, you know.
I've got that tape that I had to replace over the years.
But let me tell you, it took me a lot of years, a lot of years.
I can't say I totally replaced it, but mostly put a nail through its head.
But it takes a lot to get over the damage done if your self-perception is a negative one from the get-go.
Because we all don't leave our childhoods behind so readily.
They stay with us, I think.
And you credit it there for your drive.
Oh, absolutely.
But also, you said earlier, if you're driven by these kind of unhealthy insecurities, you need to at some point go and see a shrink.
I'm afraid to see a shrink.
Why?
I'm afraid they'll straighten me out.
And would I be successful then?
I stay a mile away.
I know it's crazy.
I've read a few books and self-analyzed.
But no, no, no.
First of all, they're very expensive in New York.
And then that way I'm too cheap to pay.
My shrink is working out.
If I work out or if I weed my garden, I'm straightened out for the moment.
Okay.
But.
That's the way it is.
I ask for selfish reasons.
I found myself at one point for the same sort of insecurities and feeling like I wasn't enough, being very driven to prove the world that I was.
And at some point that comes at the cost of like,
other set of things which are important for happiness, relationships and balance and whatever else.
So when you said about some point you need to go see a shrink, I get it because at some point you can be a bit too dragged by your pursuit to prove the world that you are enough, that you compromise a bunch of other things.
Of course you do.
I mean, if you're strong in one arena, something's got to give.
What had to give for you?
Relaxing.
I don't think I've ever relaxed in my life.
But honestly, when I'm relaxed reading a book, it's fine for a half hour.
And then I got to get up and accomplish something.
I'm very driven to accomplish, to see the difference I've made in the world, to an individual I just spoke to, to a business I've been involved in, to a neighbor I've befriended.
Why?
I've got to, why?
Because I want to know for sure, without a doubt, that I haven't wasted a minute and that my existence makes a difference.
Why?
Because I think it's important.
Why?
You ask good questions.
Damn you.
Why?
Why is that?
Because I don't want it to be a wasted life.
You know, I'm just one of those that you get one shot at it, and I want to see how much of an influence.
And how much of a difference I can make.
I really do.
I mean, so I guess relaxing feels like wasting time.
It doesn't mean that I can't have fun with friends.
I have the most great circle of close friends that I have so much fun with.
That's a priority in my life, and it was a priority in my business.
Fun is number one in developing teams, I believe.
But in addition to that, I just have to be productive.
I do need a shrink, don't I?
Do you have one in the house?
No, but if you find one, send it my way.
Would they give me a courtesy hour?
Courtesy hour.
Trying to get a discount.
Off you went into the world of work, as you said, you had some twigs.
By the way, you would make a good shrink.
Can we just switch gears a little bit and you do me?
You don't realize what's happening here.
I'm actually using you as my shrink.
Oh, really?
I don't think so.
I ask questions that I genuinely care about.
§03Transcript — part 3
And typically that means because I'm struggling with something.
So that's why I was pursuing that avenue so diligently.
You had some 22 or 23 jobs before you started your own business.
Yes, I did.
Jobs from everything from being a receptionist to a waitress to everything in between.
We often look back at those jobs that didn't pay us a lot and that the world doesn't hold in high regard as...
Some people might think that they are a waste of time or they were like necessary.
What's your view on when you were a receptionist and a waitress?
What role did that play in your overall success?
I think whether you have a menial job or an important job, it's what you're learning.
I mean, there wasn't a job where I didn't learn a lot.
For me, I would take any job, not based on pay, but gee, what could I learn?
What could I learn?
Because that made you more valuable.
I never really thought it made you more valuable to be paid more.
But, hey, I haven't done this before.
Let's see what this is about.
And you learn skills.
I think I learned more through my waitressing jobs.
I always had a few at once.
You know, you could always get a waitress job behind a counter.
I think I learned more about people waitressing than building my business, honest to God.
You have to size someone up.
Your territory is your counter.
You have to make them happy.
You want to upsell them a little bit.
Maybe you can give the second cup of coffee for free, but how about a slice of cheesecake?
It's really good today.
You learn how to hustle.
You learn how to be organized, how to get the containers in order, how to make sure they're filled when the customer steps out, how to get that person something to drink while you're working on this person.
I mean, I learned so much in every one of those jobs.
And you know what's great about having a lot of jobs?
You start to get a profile of what you're good at and what you're not.
And I, in short order, after maybe seven or eight jobs, not that I knew what I was going to do for a living, but I knew what I was good at.
I knew I was good at getting along with people and making them smile.
I could talk to somebody and make them happy.
Absolutely.
And I also knew that I was efficient.
I could create a system in anything.
I would see the diner counter all wrong, not running right.
I would talk to the boss and say, you know, if you did this with the maple syrup and changed the sugar, and I could, like an executive, I could rearrange the whole counters, you know, in an efficient manner.
And I...
started learning that those were my two gifts, people and efficiency.
And if you think about any business, those are really big ticket items.
If you could choose people, motivate people, get along with people, make them get along with each other, plus create systems to grow a big business.
I mean, the minute you have more than a half dozen people, you need systems.
And my companies were always so well organized that they ran like, they just ran like a Swiss clock.
Is that a good analogy?
Everything was in its place.
Nothing had to be duplicated.
It was fast forward.
And so I was able to build very quickly, which I had to do because we had big people in my market.
And if I had built and replicated systems at a normal pace, I would never catch up to them.
So I had to do double, triple time.
And what's your answer on that one?
Systems.
Systems get you moving forward, get a business like a machine.
And that was a gift I got from my menial jobs.
Thank God I worked.
Imagine if I hadn't worked and went out into the real world thinking I was dumb, that I couldn't do anything just because I couldn't read or write.
Thank God I learned I could be a lifeguard.
I learned I could be a tent salesman.
I could be Barbara Buttons calling for solicitations eight hours a day.
I could be all those menial jobs, a hot dog salesman, sell more hot dogs than the next guy.
I mean, I had confidence from every one of those jobs.
Like, look how cool I am.
Maybe I wouldn't win respect.
by everybody, well, who cares about the hot dogs?
But in my book, I knew I sold more hot dogs than he sold on his.
So, no, thank God for the jobs.
You learn so much by trying different jobs on.
You know, it's so important.
At that age, if I'd asked you what your dream was, what would you have answered?
I wouldn't have answered the question.
I wouldn't have answered the question.
I had no idea.
I would say I just want to work.
I just want to, quote, work.
It didn't make a difference what I was working at.
I just knew that when I was working, I felt capable.
That's all.
And conversely then, what are you bad at?
I think, as you've said, it's very important to know strengths but also weaknesses.
You know what I'm bad at?
I'm bad at math, numbers.
Terrible.
Just terrible, really.
I don't even understand.
I took algebra four times.
Four times.
Two years in summer school.
Never passed it.
They finally just gave me the grade to go through.
I'm very bad at math.
I'm bad at legal.
I'm bad at committee meetings.
I'm bad at listening to a blowhard who just goes on and on, doesn't cut to the chase.
I'm very bad at impatience.
I want to know what you want from me, and then you tell me how you got there.
I don't want to hear how you got there and then what you want.
I always want to cut to the chase, so I'm impatient.
I've learned to hide it because you can't be so visibly impatient with people.
But as long as they tell me what they want on the front end, I could hang in there for the long explanation after because I've already concluded what I'm going to do, you know.
Yeah.
So that's what I'm bad at.
But lucky for me, I've always surrounded myself with people who are opposite to me.
And by the way, I shouldn't really say I'm bad at numbers because I had a business partner, my 10% business partner, Esther, my whole life.
I made her my partner.
She was great at legal and finance.
And she used to spend hours when we wanted to open one or two new offices doing the numbers to see if we could afford it.
And I used to come into her office and say, what do you think?
She says, I don't think we should really do it.
I said, well, let me tell you why we're going to do it because you really need to beat the next guy.
And let me tell you, if we have $80,000 and the desk produces only $42,000, it's going to take us about nine months to actually meet our overhead.
And we'll have to cut back on the advertising.
We'll have the managers work for free.
And she'd say, what?
And it worked every time.
So I must have had a taste for numbers in that kind of a way.
I could always see the picture on numbers, and I'd be right.
It was bugged the crap out of her because she had all the numbers.
But, yeah, but I'm not good at adding up the numbers at all.
A lot of people think, and I think it's really liberating to hear that, they probably exclude themselves mentally of being a business person because they are bad at numbers.
Oh, gosh.
I think numbers are the least important thing in business, by far.
I look at all the entrepreneurs I've invested in Shark Tank.
I am telling you.
The most successful, I hope I'm not giving anybody the short haul here, but the most successful are not good at numbers.
They're exceptional at people.
I think if you're great at people and you have ambition, you have the two magic cards.
To succeed in business, you do.
That's what it's about.
People and ambition, the drive to get to the finish line.
Yeah.
Then you find a way.
You hire the people you need.
You borrow the people you need.
You exchange your gift for their gift part-time if you have to get what you need.
But you always get what you need.
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Talking about borrowing.
You borrowed $1,000 off Ray.
Yeah, Ramon Simone, yeah.
Ramon Simone.
Nice name, huh?
Ramon Simone.
Wow.
Okay.
And he was your boyfriend at the time?
He was my boyfriend.
I met him at the diner.
That was my last diner job.
And he offered to loan me $1,000 to start a business within three months.
Did you ask him for the money?
No.
He said, you've got a great personality.
You'd be great in real estate sales.
Why don't you start a business?
And that's how it happened.
Really?
Yeah.
So he had a gift for seeing talent, obviously.
And then off you go.
24 years old, you started your own.
23.
But let me tell you something, thank God.
At 23, you don't know what to be afraid of.
You don't know what falling off a cliff's about.
And at 23 and poor, you have nothing to lose.
There was no risk involved.
I could always get my diner job back or any waitress job or pool hand.
I had millions of jobs I could get.
I wasn't afraid of being unemployed.
So I figured, what the heck, I'll try it.
Let's see where it goes.
However, what I didn't know...
And when the light went on in my head was I didn't know how much I would like being a boss.
First day, I'm like, I love this.
Did I like real estate?
I didn't really care about real estate.
Did I like the people I was meeting?
They were all nice, but I had been meeting nice people my whole life.
But I love the fact that I was in charge.
And so I loved real estate.
I loved the people.
I loved the paint on the wall.
I loved everything because I was a boss.
§04Transcript — part 4
I was meant for being a boss.
I felt so freed.
So free to dream and do whatever I wanted and nobody could tell me what to do.
It was just, it was the greatest gift of all, freedom.
Freedom.
I'm getting juicy just talking about it.
That real estate company became very big.
Am I right in thinking it became the biggest?
Residential firm in New York.
Yes.
Before I sold it, we were number one.
The biggest residential real estate firm in New York.
Why?
Because there's so many residential firms in New York.
There's so many like real estate people.
They're everywhere.
I mean, every person I meet is in real estate in New York.
So how do you become the best?
Honestly, I think there's a lot of reasons how you succeed, right?
But I think the major cards were I was competing with the old boys network and they were asleep at the wheel.
It's not that they didn't do good work, but you have to realize real estate brokerage in New York when I was started,
and I guess it's somewhat the same, was controlled by rich guys who inherited the business from their father or their grandfather before them.
So they were very important, very self-important, very well-educated, very good at what they did, but they did the same old thing.
They did it the same.
And they also hired people like themselves.
They were white, privileged, and they hired white, privileged women to work for them.
That was a whole cast of characters.
When I came in, I couldn't get those white privileged women to work for me because I was a kid.
I didn't know anything, and it was no status associated with it.
We were a new kid in town.
We had three people.
Who was going to work for me?
I had to beg, borrow, and steal to get anybody to work for me.
And so they were cocky.
And the minute I smelled that they were cocky, which happened to me about the third year in business when I went to a large real estate board of New York meeting, I remember I went home and I said, I'm going to beat these guys.
And I knew it because they were very cocky that they were in charge.
And what weakness did that create?
A tremendous weakness.
They're blind.
It's like competing with blind people.
They were also rich enough not to want to lose money.
When the market went south, which happens again and again in real estate, it's up-down market, they would not spend money.
They would hold their money in and protect it.
They would not take a chance because of the reputation.
They would check what they were going to do against a committee.
I didn't have committees.
They would check what they were going to do against their attorneys.
They had attorneys.
They were all stop signs.
I would think of an idea on a Tuesday and have it in the street by Wednesday.
They would think of an idea on Tuesday if they even thought of it or if they listened to a good employee who had a good idea, which tended not to do.
It was always their ideas.
But if they listened to that idea.
Employee, they'd have to check it with the committee, work it up the line, talk to their dad, talk to the attorneys.
I'm like, thank God they're in quicksand.
So I think a big reason why I was able to succeed is because I competed against the norm of an old boy network.
If I had to compete with other people like me wanting to prove something desperate to make a go of it, I would have had that hunger to compete with.
These guys weren't hungry.
They were well fed and well vacationed and they liked it that way.
One of the things I took from that is whenever you're competing against like a big, complacent, slow incumbent, being the opposite of the incumbent is the winning strategy.
You were quick because you didn't have that bureaucracy or sign off for lawyers.
You were like high risk.
You were agile.
And you were naive.
You know what else I had, which isn't to be underestimated?
I had a wonderful imagination.
I would think of the greatest bullshit to create publicity every day of the week.
I just would dream up some stupid stuff and give it to the papers or the TV stations.
Churn out reports that I had no business turning out, but I could think of an idea a minute and I would just throw it out there and see what happened.
Nobody was thinking of new ideas in real estate.
It was about controlling the listing market and controlling the number of bodies working for you.
That was the only game in town, not how you did it or what differently you could do.
Nobody even really was concerned about the customer or the sellers.
They just want to know if they had a contact with them because it was a contact game.
But I came into a different generation where contacts meant less in New York.
As the waters of New York changed and everybody started coming to New York, different nationalities and different colors of people, everything was changing.
And these guys really thought it was not changed.
You know, so it was such an advantage to have a lot of ideas and to have to have tattered soldiers, anybody you get your hands on and to make them believe they were as good as the fancy people.
And my people believe they were as good.
And you know what?
They were as good and they were better in the end because they all hustled and they all had something to prove.
You know, we were all the poor kids trying to make it.
Make it in New York.
You know, so we were all driven, you know.
We're soulmates in a way.
That company culture and that like philosophy, you're citing that as being really pivotal to why you were successful.
What does that mean like culture?
And how do you go about creating that culture?
The main card is having fun with your people.
I put fun before anything.
I mean, I certainly wanted to drive sales hard, open new offices, hire new people, nurture a great management system, all the things that go into any business.
But more than that, I wanted to make sure everybody loved each other.
And the way you get to break down barriers between people who all compete with you.
each other.
Remember in sales, you like who you're working with, but you don't really totally like them because they're after your market.
So you have friend enemies really in a way.
And so I believe that you, if you had enough fun with your people, it was a great equalizer.
When people laugh together, they come up with new ideas.
When people laugh together, they loosen up.
I used to have people dress for my parties or they couldn't come in.
I would have them dress 1940s, 1950s.
I had them cross-dress.
Oh, what a rebellion at the kingdom.
The straight guys, I'm not cross-dressing for her.
Of course they cross-dressed for me.
I had a party where everybody dressed as a nun.
I'm not going as a nun.
Of course they came as a nun.
Do you know how exciting it is to be in the Waldorf Astoria ballroom and see a thousand nuns at a party?
It's a blast and so much fun.
So we would have picnics, parties.
I would take the women spontaneously, hey, come with me.
We're going downstairs to Barney and buying your new underwear.
Why?
Because it's so bizarre.
And they all go down and pick out the most expensive underwear they could find.
I mean, this bizarre stuff made them tell everybody who wasn't in the company, oh, God, guess what we did?
It was an adventure.
And sooner or later, what happened after about, I guess, maybe 10, 12 years, I didn't have to recruit anymore.
Our reputation as being the best place to work started recruiting for us.
My salespeople recruited for us just by repeating stories that happened every day.
And so I do believe you create a great imaginative culture.
If you could insist on giving as much attention to planning good fun.
I don't mean boring Christmas party where you drink.
Nothing like that.
Some bizarre means of having fun.
Everybody doesn't have enough fun and they want to stay with you.
I had no turnover in my company.
None.
In a business that's loaded with turnover.
Of course, I fire a third of my staff.
Every year because they couldn't sell.
But other than the ones that couldn't sell, no one ever left for another firm.
They had too much fun at us.
Why would they leave for the same commission spread?
I don't think so.
Five years in to that business, to that venture, Ramon Simone runs off with your PA.
Yes.
She was much prettier than I.
Ten years younger.
I don't blame them.
In hindsight, I don't blame them.
At the time, I didn't like it.
He was your boyfriend at the time?
He was my boyfriend at the time.
He was my 51% business partner because he took 51%, he said, because he was financing the firm, which was fair.
I was a managing partner.
I like the way that sounded.
Yes, but he ran off with my business, with my secretary the seventh year we were in business.
Yeah.
That was shocking.
I didn't expect that.
But, you know, those blows that happen to you, egos, seem the worst at the time.
But it doesn't take you long to realize why they happen and why they're the best things.
I mean, if he didn't run off with her, I would have never started the Corcoran Group.
I would still be Corcoran Simone working with him.
I mean, that got me off my butt to start my own company without his help right away because I was a scorned woman.
And I couldn't stand seeing them throw kisses at each other during the workday.
It drove me crazy.
And so I left.
I just left.
We cut the company in half.
At the time, we only had 14 people.
He took seven, I took seven, and off I went.
Thank God that happened.
And then he gave me those wonderful parting words.
You'll never succeed without me.
Thank you, Ray.
Did that drive you those words for the festival?
I was pissed.
When he said that, I was like, vicious.
I hated him for it.
But I walked out the door hating him for it.
I hated him for it the next month, the year after that, and the year after that.
And then I started thanking him for it.
Really?
Yeah.
I realized it was a gift.
You know, insult can really be a wonderful motivator.
With my entrepreneurs that I invest in on Shark Tank, I love it when I can find an entrepreneur that had a horrible dad, had this go wrong, that go wrong, because they're angry.
They're angry and they have more to prove.
I love an entrepreneur like that.
I relate to them.
That prejudice you experienced in that male-dominated industry, is it easier to manipulate people when they have a prejudice against you?
First of all, you have to realize they didn't see me.
I was invisible to them.
They didn't take me seriously.
Why?
Would they take me seriously?
Even the day I realized I was invisible, I realized I had dead vanity.
I said, nobody's watching me.
Does that make them easy to manipulate, these men?
Well, I don't know if it meant I manipulated them, but it was easier to compete with them.
Because the word manipulate is like a dirty word.
But at the end of the day, if someone is thinking that you don't matter and they're like disrespecting you or they are sexist towards you, their underestimation seems like an opportunity.
It's a great opportunity.
You know who was easy to manipulate, though?
Because when the business got large, we were more dependent on huge development sites where they had 300, 400 condos for sale.
We'd have to get control of that building.
And I was the salesman who got the control.
§05Transcript — part 5
I went out after the developers.
The developers you could manipulate easily as a woman.
They had all men working for them.
It was a man's world, real estate.
The developers didn't take me seriously at all, but I flirted.
I cajoled.
I wore short skirts.
I dressed well in tight suits.
I played my cards.
I wore high heels, even though my feet were killing me.
Yeah, did I manipulate them?
Of course I did.
Did I tell them they looked handsome?
They were all handsome.
Did I tell them they were brilliant?
You're brilliant.
They were all brilliant.
Did I manipulate?
Yes.
I don't even think I'll go to heaven, if you want to call it manipulation.
And your workforce, if I spoke to one of your employees and said,
What's Barbara like to work with?
What do you imagine they would say to me?
I know what they would say, and you won't believe me.
They would say, I love Barbara.
Well, I actually spoke to your assistant.
Oh, you did?
Well, she's going to lie.
Emily?
Yeah, she said you were a nightmare.
No, I'm joking.
I'm joking.
She wouldn't say that.
But, you know, you have to realize who you're asking.
Emily is an absolute angel on earth.
She has never had a bad day.
I don't...
I wish I was her.
She's incredible.
So you can't ask her.
You have to ask a son of a bitch who works for me.
What would they say?
They would say, we love Barbara.
I'm telling you, and I deserve it.
I don't mean to brag, but I am the best boss I've ever met, by far.
And I don't think anyone could be a better boss than me.
Honest to God.
And I think the root of being a good boss is from the very first day I was in business, I understood the cardinal rule, which is I work for you, you don't work for me.
And that's my attitude my entire life.
What can I do for you?
How can I make your job easier?
What don't you like to do?
What would you rather do?
How could I be this for you?
What else do you want?
I shower my people with anything they need selflessly.
And you'd say, well, that doesn't put the boss ahead.
It does.
Because as they get stronger and go up the rank, they carry me for a free ride along with them.
That's how it goes.
No, I do believe the key to being a big...
A big boss, a growing boss, and a great boss is really understand you work for who's working for you.
It's as simple as that, you know.
It's kind of like being a good mother in a way.
You're a slave to your kids.
You just want to please your children, you know.
I've been thinking about something recently about how leadership isn't about being, and this kind of sounds like it's wrong, but let me explain.
Leadership isn't about being consistent with your people.
Some people in your team will require a certain type of treatment to get the best out of them.
And then some people in your team will require probably the opposite treatment to get the best out of them.
Can you relate to that?
Does that strike you?
So can I tell you, it's a misnomer that you treat anyone like someone else.
No, I was biased with every single person who worked with me.
I would do different things for different people based on their own need.
I would just really size them up.
What's going to push this kid ahead?
What's going to make this person have confidence?
What could I do?
And I had a different formula for everyone.
No, I think the key was knowing each individual and what floats their boat.
What's important to them?
What's going to make them better?
No, I was never even handed ever with any of the people I worked with because they were all individuals.
And today, more than ever, people really want to be individuals.
They want to be treated as individuals.
Their interest first.
You know, I meet a lot of my peers who complain that the modern day worker wants to be promoted fast, wants their interest met.
I'm like, well, that's fine.
I've always done that.
You know, that's the right way to handle people, to get the best out of people.
Yeah, no, that's the way to go.
Wherever that philosophy came from, they haven't created a big team or they know better.
What characteristic would I have to demonstrate working for you that would make you fire me quickest?
Fire you?
Yeah.
Attitude.
Okay.
Absolutely.
You know what happens is as careful as I was to hire, and I control the hiring for probably the first 10 years of my business.
Until we got to 500 people and went past that, I couldn't do it anymore.
I did some, but not a lot.
What I would love to do is call someone to my office on Friday.
I love firing people on Friday.
I would stop by someone's desk on a Wednesday and say, hey, would you have any time sometime on Friday?
They should have heard about the rumors.
Yes.
What time is good for you?
Two?
See you at two.
I couldn't wait till they came in to fire them.
You know why?
Because I picked out individuals who were negative.
And my attitude toward the negative person was they were ruining my good kids.
Because people who are negative have to have somebody else to be negative with them.
They got to talk to somebody.
Complain.
Okay, I'm not talking about people who tell you what you're doing wrong.
They're invaluable so that you can get better.
I'm talking about chronic complainers and negative people.
You got to get rid of them.
So I learned very early.
After firing one negative person, never tell them why you're firing them.
Okay?
Or you get in a rat's nest.
Why am I negative?
Why am I?
I go, no, you just don't fit the company.
But why?
I don't know.
No, you just don't fit the company.
Maybe that's a little mean, but I never carried a negative person for more than a couple of months.
Sometimes they're undercover at first, but eventually they come out like, hey, do you have any time on Friday?
If you ever ask me for a meeting on Friday, I'm sorry, Barbara.
Don't come.
I'm fully booked.
I'll take the Friday off.
Blimey.
Why are you so irked by complainers?
And is it something about...
They're thieves.
They're thieves.
They take your money away and they take your energy.
And the most valuable asset you have is your energy.
And if they take your energy away, you're not going to deliver enough to everybody else.
It's not enough to go around.
No, they're thieves in the night.
They come in, they got their hands in your pockets, and they're taking your goods.
That's how I see negative people.
When you have a team filled with very positive people,
It's like they're stuffing your pockets with money and jewels all the time.
It's the way you want to be.
It's those people you want to be around.
Have you noticed, because I think I've noticed this, that, you know, my first business where we had about somewhere around 500 people, 95% of my people problems were created by like one person.
Of course, the complainer.
The negative person.
You didn't ever work on Friday?
No, do you know what?
I didn't realize.
I should have just made the decision quickly to get rid of them.
But then I had that complex, which bosses sometimes have, where I go, well, if I get rid of them, then it's going to impact the culture and then they're going to do this.
And sometimes there's so much of a complainer and so negative.
They've acquired so many ears to be negative too.
There was this fear that if I fire them, then there's going to be even more negativity, like a volcano of negativity.
That was naivety on your part.
Yes, it was.
I'm sure you sound very differently once you've fired a few people.
Amen.
Yeah.
Amen.
I learned the lesson.
And one of my philosophies now is like, as soon as you know.
As soon as you know.
Fast as you possibly can.
And your point about.
Don't say it's because they are, well, you can't say because they're negative.
Oh, you can't win at that game.
Yeah.
You know, it took me probably three years.
I hired a great salesman from another firm, which was reaching for me because I groomed all my own.
No one wanted to come.
And someone actually wanted to come and work for me from a bigger firm.
I couldn't believe it.
I hired this lady.
She was so negative right away.
So negative.
She had two personalities, outward when you're interviewing and inward when they're working for you.
And she was so, so negative.
And I really thought I could change her around.
I'm such a positive human being.
Everybody here is positive.
I'm going to change her around.
And then I learned the important lesson.
If her parents couldn't make her smile, I wasn't going to.
Forget it.
They had this lady for their whole life and she's miserable.
I'm not going to make her happy.
And so part of it is admitting defeat that you're not all that powerful where you're going to turn somebody around.
No, negative, you just get rid of them.
Terrible.
§06Transcript — part 6
Let's talk about something more positive.
What about compliments?
Compliments when they're genuine, not compliments that are empty and not compliments in front of a group for the sake of grandstanding.
I just don't believe in it.
People see right through the bullshit.
You know, everybody, you could get somebody with the lowest IQ in the world.
You bullshit them, they know it.
They just know it.
You just assume people are smarter than they look.
Okay?
And so I think a genuine compliment with specifics to back it up is the greatest thing in the world.
And you'll make someone fly and become even stronger the next day.
But if it's not specific and why that was so smart that you did and what it did for us, that's a compliment.
Let's give her a round of applause.
Okay.
That's the right kind of compliment.
But, you know, to find those compliments, it is creating a habit as a manager or a business owner of looking for them.
I would walk through and try to find anything good I could talk about, anything anybody did good that somebody would snitch on.
And then I'd get the details down and then give them a compliment individually if I thought they were a private person.
But if I thought they were a competitive person, I always did it in front of the group because they're competitive and they want everybody to see they're better.
So the compliments are so powerful.
But they pass.
I think the greatest compliment you could give an individual is trust that they are better than they think they are.
And I honestly think that people write themselves.
off is so much less than they're capable of.
When you say to someone, I noticed you dress, I'll give you an example, because this is a silly example, but I got my advertising manager.
She was a salesman who was mediocre, meeting overhead and turning out a little profit, but not great.
And I looked at her every day and thought, she is such a beautiful dresser.
What she can do with her hair, with the clothing is incredible.
And I went out of my way to walk over to her desk.
She had the perfect match.
She had the perfect thing.
Her desk looked like I wanted to vacation there.
It was so gorgeous.
So I said to her, Anita, how would you like to be my advertising manager?
She said, I didn't know you had an advertising manager.
I said, I don't, but how about you take it?
Now, how did I know she would be exceptional?
In advertising because everything about her was put together.
I figured that had a transfer to great graphics, beautiful design, the layout of the page, because that was kind of like a page I saw on her desk.
She was incredible.
I think you just have to find the gift in people and point it out and think, how can I take advantage?
Anita became probably the envy of every firm in the city because of our great advertising.
That wasn't me.
I got the credit.
It was her.
But I blossomed her up because I saw that gift in her.
It sounds like a stretch, but it's really not.
You know, it's not a stretch if you keep your eyes open and see what people do.
We'll go to it.
We talked about the mouth there with the smile, but what about the eyes?
You mean looking at someone in the eyes?
Yeah.
Oh, you have to.
I mean, do you trust anyone who doesn't make eye contact?
Ever?
Really?
You figure they're either insecure, they shift, insecure, dishonest, or...
Probably those two.
That's what I would say.
Dishonest or insecure.
Either way, you don't want to hang out with them.
No, the eyes are key.
Because I read that in the pandemic, when you were hiring for one of your roles, you basically, there was 500 people and you basically excluded everybody that didn't make eye contact with the camera.
You read that about me.
Yeah.
I think it was probably exaggerated.
I don't think it was 500 people.
But just a lot of people.
Yeah, yeah.
But a lot of people, definitely.
Okay?
You don't make, absolutely.
And you excluded everyone who had bad lighting.
I did, yeah.
Why?
Because it showed a lack of aggressiveness and caring for themselves, I felt.
I mean, if I was interviewing for a job and I knew it was competitive, most jobs are, I would want to show my best self, I think, through everything.
I mean, maybe me more than most people would do it.
But I think if you show up with bad lighting and then on top of that you don't make good eye contact, next please.
No, it's just terrible.
No.
It's very hard to hire people through COVID online, but I never did.
In the end, whoever I hired, I insisted I meet them in person.
You can't really do a thorough job.
Unless you're in person, I believe, or I've never been able to learn how to do that.
Shark Tank.
I'm a dragon on Dragon's Den.
You're a shark on Shark Tank.
All the same.
Yeah.
Means you're a sucker.
Does it?
To be fair, I mean, I think dragons are slightly more impressive than sharks.
I've got to be honest.
You think so?
I think sharks are more impressive than dragons.
Sharks are real.
Dragons don't exist.
We're kind of mythical.
Dragons are silly.
It's an old-fashioned word.
Sharks are sharks.
Well, sharks, well, I mean, other than jaws, what have sharks really done for society?
Whereas a dragon is...
You're someone of great imagination.
To be a dragon, you have to have great imagination because they don't exist.
It's like being a unicorn.
So can we agree that dragons are better?
No, I'm afraid not.
Okay, well, you're on Shark Tank.
And linked to what we just said about quickly assessing if a person is...
Is legit and worth investing in.
What have you learned?
You've been on the show longer than I've been on the UK version of the show.
What advice would you give me as a new dragon to be successful from your experience?
I would say keep your money in your pocket for a little bit.
Okay.
My first few seasons of Shark Tank, I spent so much money, threw money at the wall at anything that moved.
Yeah.
So I hope you haven't made that mistake.
I needed like 11 investments in my first season.
But for me, what I have learned in 14 years, and I've learned it a good 10 years ago, I'd say.
Is I never choose a business, I always choose the entrepreneur.
I have sat there and listened to business plans that I don't even know what they're talking about.
It makes no sense to me what they're talking about because it's not a business I know or I don't understand the terminology.
And in the old days, I would have thought I was too stupid.
But now I know I'm smart enough that if I'm not understanding, it's okay.
I'm probably still smart.
But I have to be really smart in making the choice of the individual.
Do I trust this person?
Can I visualize them going through a wall?
What's their background?
Are they good at getting back up?
Do they have ambition?
Not passion.
Passion is so overrated.
I feel passionate.
We really want to do this.
It's like saying you're excited about your first date.
Who cares?
Wait until you marry the lady and see how you feel.
But I think the commitment and the drive and the ambition.
Is what I'm always looking for.
I'm looking, just trying to smell it out.
If someone says they were poor and they didn't have a father, let's say,
I'm biased right away.
I want to buy the business.
You want to invest straight away.
It doesn't mean I will because I have to hear more about how they handle things, what kind of an individual they are.
But no, I'm very biased or I should really say I'm.
I'm not very nice or fair-minded with rich kids.
The problem with investing in a business owned by a rich kid is usually raise money already rather easily.
It's not sweat equity.
So you got a chunk of change to get started.
Okay, that's nice.
Now, you would think that...
That would make things easier.
I think it makes things difficult.
You don't spend your money wisely.
It's Papa's money or your parents'friend's money or wherever you got it from.
So it's not valuable money.
And I've seen more people stand and say, well, we pivoted.
We lost that.
We pivoted.
What happened to the guys that gave you the cash?
What happened to them?
No regard at all.
When you get a poor kid, they typically have something to prove.
They really have to stretch every penny.
It's their own money.
They're dying just to get a little bit more.
There's so much a greater need.
And it's also a desire.
To do well in living in their life.
They want to go on vacations.
They, too, want to get a sports car.
They want to get a nice apartment.
These rich kids have had it all before.
They've been on vacation everywhere.
They've always had rich cars, rich parents.
So I think it's so much harder for a rich kid to succeed as an entrepreneur.
I just love poor kids.
And I have to tell you, out of my whole portfolio, I don't have a single rich kid who succeeded.
Well, most of it is because I don't invest in them in the last five years.
But even when I did years ago, none of them succeeded.
No, they went on to do something else.
My poor people, those are my winners.
Yeah.
They're desperate to succeed.
The only thing that beats growing up poor, in Cochrane's opinion, is growing up damaged.
Oh.
Yeah.
Well, aren't we all damaged in one way or another, right?
But you could get damaged by money and affluence so easily.
I think it's easier to raise a poor kid than it is a rich kid.
Because of the circles they fly in, their value systems, who they measure themselves against, what they measure.
I think it's more difficult to be an affluent kid or affluent rich parent and raise a good kid, a good kid with values.
I really think it's harder.
You know, when I said I spoke to your assistant, I did.
§07Transcript — part 7
Well, we did.
Emily, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Emily.
Good thing you talked to the good one.
Oh, there's another one.
There's three, and they don't like me.
No, I'm only kidding.
I'm only kidding.
And she told me about some pictures in your office that are hanging on the wall.
Oh, those.
The whole way of doom.
What is the whole way of doom?
Well, you see, anyone who's on Shark Tank, as you well know, Dragon's Den, has their night in the sun.
Where they're on the show and everybody orders from them.
And they become almost rich overnight, or at least they think they're going to be rich.
They're all celebrating, excited.
All right.
And then something goes wrong with the business.
Maybe three to four months out.
That's my timetable.
I'm waiting for that day.
Something's going to go wrong.
It's not just the patent didn't come through.
That's minor stuff.
Like the mold was wrong, where they delivered 10,000 pieces and they were made wrong.
And he had the patent.
I didn't know he was going to go.
Give it to me, but he ran off with it.
Something goes wrong.
I just wait around and I watch.
And I say, how's it going?
And there's only two different responses to that, which is, he promised me, you know, he promised me.
I mean, the guy said he was good.
I go over to my wall and I turn the entrepreneur's picture upside down to remind myself never to talk to them again or spend time.
No, I'll talk to them, but I'm not going to spend my time because they're victims.
And then you have the one in four people who handle it this way.
Ah, crap.
I can't believe I made that mistake.
Okay, let's see what we should do.
That's an entrepreneur.
Moving on, moving out, and going forward and taking the blame, even if they weren't to blame.
Every one of my really successful businesses I've done so well have had the worst setbacks, but they've always taken responsibility.
And those pictures are always right side up.
They call me on my cell.
Hello, how can I help you?
Because they're phenomenal entrepreneurs.
I believe that the difference between the really good ones and the ones that don't make it are the ones that don't make it know how to be a victim.
They feel sorry for themselves.
They blame the next guy, and they don't take the responsibility as their own.
And that's what an entrepreneur does.
You're the boss.
It's your problem, period.
It's your problem.
It rests with you.
Now what are you going to do about it?
And these kids that are really equipped to not hesitate at all but just get on the horse and go gallop.
I'm going, going, going, going, going, going again.
They're terrific.
I invested in four women cousins who have a very clever, well, I don't know how clever the business was, but they're clever.
And they lost $800,000 a month three stolen from their accounts.
Couldn't pay their suppliers.
All of their sales were gone.
I couldn't wait to talk to them.
I was not going to say, too bad it happened.
I said, hey, hi, I heard.
What are you going to do?
Well, we're thinking already, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, back on the horse.
They recovered.
They ended the year with something like $7 million in sales.
How did they do it?
They are just not victims.
They go forward, forward, forward, forward, forward.
Those are the people I love.
I love them.
This allergic reaction to complainers and pessimists and victims.
You're back to that again.
Yeah, but does it come from, I was just reflecting on how much your mother, you said you never even saw her sleep.
She was just, she didn't complain.
She just got on with it.
Is it influenced by that?
I'll tell you what my mother did, which did influence all of us.
If we went to my mother with something my brother John did to me, or my sister Ellen did to me, something unfair, we'd go to her.
She took this from me.
She wasn't supposed to.
My mother would punish us both.
She didn't hear the complaints.
She said, you're both punished.
Sit down.
You have an hour.
That's it.
There was no sense in complaining about anything.
So we...
Never complained.
We learn in short order as little kids, you don't complain.
You just shut up.
Otherwise, you both get punished.
And, you know, in business, it's really that way, if you think about it.
Yeah, if you're going to complain.
You know, I even had an incident I learned very early on that just popped in my head that reminded me so much of my mother.
I had two department heads who hated each other, and I wasn't aware of it.
Someone brought my attention to it.
Anyway, one came in and told me why this other department was getting in the way, and the other one, I said, wow, this must be terrible for you.
I was empathetic, empathetic, listened to both complaints.
And then I said, we're here with the second one.
I went and got the first complainer, and I said, okay, girls, you obviously have a problem with the way you're working together.
Figure it out, or you're both fired.
I was mimicking my mother.
Figure it out, or you're both fired, and I left the room.
They figured it out.
They never came to me again with a complaint, you know?
Yeah.
It works against everybody.
You know, it just works against everybody, the culture of the business in every way.
Bill.
Bill.
Oh, shit, Bill.
You know what all my friends call Bill?
Poor Bill.
Isn't that a shame?
I'm the nice person.
Bill is a difficult man.
And yet everybody who knows us both calls him poor Bill.
Like he married the wrong person.
Bill is your husband?
Yes.
37 years.
He said he's the nice one and you're the difficult one.
Who said that?
You said that.
Spoke to Bill?
Bill.
You spoke to Bill.
Yeah.
Don't believe Bill.
I can't believe he even answered the phone.
He's always watching TV.
I didn't speak to Bill.
Oh, gosh.
I'm lying.
You know, ironically, if you did speak with Bill, Bill adores the ground I walk on.
He can never say anything negative, and all I do is complain about Bill.
And all I do is say negative things about him.
I really mean it.
I'm a terrible wife.
I really am.
I'm not just saying that.
You should talk to Bill.
He'll confirm this.
I did and he confirmed it.
I said, you're terrible.
The thing I was really compelled by is I was reading how at some point you started out earning Bill.
Yes.
And that in a relationship can have an interesting dynamic on the like, on the...
Relationship.
Yeah, because of the status.
Definitely.
And that's what I was reading about in your story about it being a struggle at some point.
You first lied when you out-earned him for the first time.
You put it down to an accounting error and you seem to kind of not want to...
It was tough at first, you know.
When I met Bill, he owned a brokerage firm in New Jersey and I had one in New York.
I had...
1920 people, he had 1920 people.
We were even, right?
And then within the next four years, I had 500 people.
And he had 22.
Not a good scene, right?
We were both earning about, just able to pay our rent kind of when we got married.
But when it went askew that I out-earned him by a mile, you have ego at risk, you know?
Really?
Very much so.
Absolutely.
And I married the kind of guy that was most bulletproof.
For feeling ashamed about not earning money.
He was an FBI agent.
He was a top-selling agent in New Jersey when he was a young stud.
He graduated from Annapolis.
He was an honored Navy captain.
I mean, he was accomplished, the head of the Republican Club in the state of New Jersey.
Everything he did, he was accomplished.
All I did was run a business.
All right.
However, all of that stuff is not measured by money.
You know, once I was making a lot of money, it was hard for Bill.
It was hard for Bill.
It was like everybody knew me.
Once I had notoriety, you're married to Barbara.
He stopped being Bill Higgins, the FBI agent.
He stopped being Bill Higgins, the Navy captain.
I mean, all that stuff kind of.
didn't count as much anymore than it should have because we were in a New York town where everybody values you by how popular and how much money you make.
And he was less than me.
But how did he stay with the marriage after all these years?
Because Bill really doesn't have much value for money.
He never did.
It's not important to him.
He's just a nice guy.
But I had an issue with it.
§08Transcript — part 8
Yeah, I had an issue.
I felt not feminine enough when you out-earn your husband.
You don't feel that feminine.
You feel like the caveman.
Instead of the cave woman.
We have a closing tradition on this podcast.
Yes.
The last question is always left by the last guest.
The last guest left the question for you.
What did you learn from your greatest failure?
I learned that you get back up and all the opportunities and getting back up.
Just got to be a habit of getting up.
You get up and you're going to find some shit that you could do something with.
Just get up.
That's a habit.
You have to make that habit.
Barbara, thank you.
My pleasure.
Thank you for the inspiration.
Thank you for the humor.
You're hilarious and brilliant in equal measure.
Really?
You absolutely are.
You absolutely are.
And you're definitely in my top two favorite sharks.
You and Damien are my favorites.
Oh, forget about Damien.
He's no good.
Mark.
Mark's no good.
Thank you so much for your time.
And I don't want to be among your favorite sharks.
I want to be among your favorite people in the world.
You're my favorite shark now, now that I've met you.
You're so funny.
But so, for sure, for sure.
I don't believe you.
Thank you for the inspiration.
I don't believe you.
I'm looking you in the eyes.
You can trust me.
I do trust you.
You're very trustworthy, I can tell.
Thank you so much, Barbara.
It's an honor.
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