“Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran has a sense of humor. She must: an incredibly successful real estate mogul, she’s the author of three books, including my favorite title, If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails.

Yikes!

On her ABC show, which airs its second season finale this Friday, February 5 at 9 p.m., Barbara is on a panel of experts assessing potential business investments. There are some great ideas; and there are some horrible ideas.

Barbara is the only woman on the panel and presents some of the best “Are you out of your mind?” facial expressions to the deer-in-the-headlights, wannabee capitalists.

But she’s also invested in a few good ideas along the way.

Hear it now! AUDIO EXCERPT: “Think of the opportunity and the sheer entertainment value of ‘Shark Tank’! We’re working 11-hour days, listening to pitch after pitch and we’re never bored. It is so fascinating! And then you go home with new business partners. Who would say no to something like that?”

You can LISTEN to this interview with BARBARA CORCORAN, real estate mogul and panelist on ABC’s SHARK TANK, by clicking the audio player above!

Seen at Sundance with the children of Benazir Bhutto – NY Post Page Six

By Tom Sheahan

Prospective homebuyers are checking Internet sales listings more frequently and attending open houses in greater numbers, the founder and former owner of a major Manhattan brokerage firm said Tuesday.

Both are signs that the nation’s residential real estate market is on the mend, said Barbara Corcoran, who launched her real estate business in 1973 with a $1,000 loan from her then-boyfriend.

“I believe the bottom of the market was last year,” she said in an interview. Corcoran, who sold her firm for a reported $70 million, was at Regent University to deliver one of its Executive Leadership Series lectures.

Since leaving the Corcoran Group in late 2005, she has been buying four- and five-story residential buildings in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. She also has a television-production company and serves as a TV commentator on residential real estate.

One indicator she watches, Corcoran said, is the traffic at open houses. “The mood has changed,” and the wariness about buying a home is dissipating, she said.

However, financing a home purchase still can be a hurdle, and the reliance on federal lending programs may be here to stay, she said.

Corcoran, who grew up in a blue-collar community across the Hudson River from Manhattan, joked that she was “a straight D student.” But her mother provided encouragement.

“She ran the household like a boot camp and was a wonderful motivator,” said Corcoran, one of 10 children in the family.

Her business success, Corcoran said, was due largely to a combination of persistence and savvy marketing.

“I’m not religious, but I had faith that I would find a way” to overcome the hurdles that cropped up, she said. Strapped for cash during the real estate downturn in 1991, Corcoran said, she sold scores of apartments by listing them all for the same price and promoting by word of mouth.

“I sold 81 apartments in an hour flat and had 300 people waiting in line,” she recalled. When she was paid, she used the cash to open two more offices.

Corcoran said she had no plans when she sold the Corcoran Group. “I had no idea how much I would miss it,” she said.

However, selling the company provided financial stability, which she sometimes lacked. “I love going to bed at night knowing that I have enough cash in the bank,” she said.

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An Interview with Barbara Corcoran, Real Estate Mogul, Entrepreneur, and Speaker, Barbara Corcoran Inc.

Editors’ Note

Barbara Corcoran became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country by parlaying a $1,000 loan into a $5-billion-dollar real estate business in New York City called The Corcoran Group. She sold the business in 2001 for $70 million. She is the author of If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails, a national best-seller. Corcoran is the real estate contributor for NBC’s Today Show and a columnist for MORE magazine and Redbook. In addition, she is the lone female “shark” on ABC’s popular Shark Tank.

It was easy to be optimistic about real estate over the past years with the type of growth we’ve seen, but when you look at how real estate everywhere, and more specifically in New York, has been affected, is it difficult to be optimistic?

New York is always the last to fall, but it’s also the first to recover because of the depth of the demand for properties here. There are so many different countries we tap into for revenue to buy here; we’re truly an international versus a U.S. market. Although I sold my brokerage firm, I keep my ear open to the brokers and I’m convinced the market is already turning around.

In the early days, many looked at real estate brokerage as a part-time job, but today it seems that deals have become quite intricate. Has the talent pool changed significantly?

It has nothing to do with the intricacy of the deals. If anything, deals are more transparent and easier to make. The amount of money coming into and drenching our market, especially for New York, is greater than ever and coming from many more sources.

What has changed in the business as a result of so much money being earned by the brokers is the emergence of a different breed of broker – people who could easily succeed at another business but choose to be in real estate. We’ve attracted them into the field simply because there is a lot of money to be made.

For you personally, did you know that you had what some refer to as an entrepreneurial gene and that desire to create and grow your own business?

No, people really know that only after they see their own success. What I had was enough ignorance not to know how hard a fall could be. Ignorance is a wonderful empowerer – you don’t know what to be afraid of. For many entrepreneurs, that is the single best gift you get when you’re young. By the time you have 10 years under your belt, you start to realize how many near-death experiences you actually lived through, and it gets scary. And it gets scarier the longer you go, because you know what you have to lose and that fear becomes your enemy. You’re no longer open to the universe and willing to trying a dozen things at once.

For The Corcoran Group, which grew significantly in size and scale, was it challenging to maintain an entrepreneurial culture, and can you do it at a certain size?

Definitely, but the larger the company, the harder to keep creativity front and forward in any business because you have more layers and points of contact to communicate with, and more committees. Committees are a death sentence for creativity, because people are very adept at saying what’s wrong with an idea versus saying, let’s give this a shot. The bigger the company, the harder it is to innovate.

As an investor in companies now via ABC’s Shark Tank, which characteristics do you look for in the senior management?

It’s always the same. It doesn’t necessarily mean that person will become senior management down the road, because different entrepreneurs have different talents. But I’m always looking for a high energy level, because I’ve never seen an a person with low energy succeed. I’m also looking for someone who can present well, and who has intelligent answers to the objections I raise. But primarily, I’m looking for a salesman, because there is no such thing as a company that succeeds without a great salesman selling it. So if someone is super intelligent and answering all the questions right but they’re not a salesman, and they don’t have a partner who is a great salesman, I’m not investing. If they can’t sell it, it’s not going to go.

Via Shark Tank, you have the opportunity to invest, help grow, and make money with others, but do you long to start your own enterprise again?

I’m doing that with each of these entrepreneurs – I’ve started eight businesses in the past two months. I really feel I picked the winners in the lot, because I have a good nose for that. Each of them, by far, is exactly like my past super salespeople. It is second nature to me to help them along as I did in the past. They’re each super salespeople with a good idea and the passion and energy to go with it. Yet, none of it is real estate.

At the Shark Tank, do you prefer to invest on your own, and is it hard to partner with others on the panel?

I find it’s both good and bad investing with another shark. The good news is that each shark has a different circle of influence and a different knowledge base, and that’s a lot of extra power. The bad news is I have more people to check in with, so the deal moves slower. Speed is key to an entrepreneur. So I’d rather do deals on my own, but sometimes, I don’t have the knowledge or contact pool I need to help the entrepreneur and that’s when I partner up.

How challenging is it to get away from business and maintain a work/life balance?

The largest challenge for me is the constant flow of e-mail. It’s a terrible thing to constantly feel that your business is never done and someone is waiting to hear from you. There is an urgency and speed that is taking place in the business climate that is terrible for doing quality work, because you’re too often reacting versus thinking. I don’t know the answer on that one but I’m going to figure it out.

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