Barbara Corcoran
Investor, Shark Tank. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderentertainerauthorhost@barbaracorcoran ↗LinkedIn ↗barbaracorcoran.com ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Corcoran founded the New York City residential brokerage The Corcoran Group with a $1,000 loan, expanding it before selling it for $66 million in 2001. Since 2009, she has starred as an original investor on ABC’s Shark Tank, investing in over 100 businesses, and authored the bestselling book Shark Tales.
1shows
1appearances
19statements
3resolved
2supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
11said about them ↓ Everything Barbara Corcoran said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Every major business breakthrough Corcoran achieved was catalyzed by an insult
“Because every one of my great successes building the business, the ones that were bellwether changes that I thought, wow, did that make a change? They were always a result of an insult.”
Corcoran: All business success or failure rests entirely on working with people
“All you needed to know is how to work with people, and that's all the business ever is. All the work I do today, it rests entirely, any success or failure, rests entirely on my ability to work with the people at hand.”
Barbara Corcoran: Effective marketing requires exaggeration and storyline acumen
“It's not a black and white game marketing. It's a softer side of things, right? It involves exaggeration. It involves an acumen for seeing what a storyline is, or what would capture people's interest.”
Corcoran demanded $66 million for her firm because 66 was lucky
“Great. Come back when you get sixty-six million cash. And he said, why sixty-six million? I said, because it's worth it. And I hung up, and I said to my brother, John, just got twenty-three million. Think of that, John. Imagine us having twenty-three million d…”
Corcoran believes founders from poor backgrounds have a much higher success rate
“I'm very biased. They have a much better shot at succeeding.”
Corcoran started her real estate empire with a $1,000 loan
“And Ray gave me the thousand dollars I started in my own firm.”
Spending her first commission on a luxury coat built Corcoran's confidence
“I ran right over to Bergdorf Goodman's, and I blew it on a new coat And it was the smartest thing I could have done, because I dressed like a poor kid from Edgewater. Nothing looked, you know, I just looked not the part, but I bought the fanciest damn coat bro…”
Corcoran booked clients for full days so they couldn't see competing brokers
“If you could control someone's time, they can't go to anyone else. I would say, I'll pick you up at the Drake Hotel, it's now a new name, at nine o'clock, and be aware we won't be finished till at least five 30. This way you can't even entertain going with ano…”
Corcoran created NYC market reports because public real estate data didn't exist
“Remember, there was no public data of apartment prices, and in the vacuum of no numbers, I supplied a number, and they wanted to do a story on the bad market, and I put a label on it, how bad it was, right?”
In the 1970s, women dominated NYC real estate but men owned everything
“The whole business was 90% female. It wasn't like women were not in the real estate brokerage field. But it just happened that all the firms were owned by the men.”
Corcoran scaled her firm by instantly turning all spare cash into headcount
“Whenever I had spare money, I would divide it by an overhead monthly, figure out how many bodies I could afford, like a mother paying for their kids, and then I would go out and hire that many people. That's, it was a simple formula I never changed, and it was…”
Market stagnation kills brokerages much faster than severe market crashes
“Nothing is terrible for brokerage. A big seller's market is great because it's action. A horrible market is great because people have to sell. But in the beginning, when nothing happens, you go out of business.”
Corcoran made over $1 million in net commissions in 90 minutes
“To see those apartments, and I'm telling you, an hour and a half, I had more than a million dollars in net commissions.”
Corcoran: Pitching Midtown corporate HR door-to-door saved early brokerage business
“If not for that, I don't think I would have stayed in business because I went door to door and knocked on all these corporate Personnel departments to try to get business. I saw where the traffic was coming from, and I had great accounts that fed their people …”
Corcoran: Co-founder Ray Simone held a 51% controlling stake
“No, he owned 51%. And That's how I found out the value of that one percent.”
Corcoran: Decided on day one to become queen of NYC real estate
“I remember answering that phone, sitting there, And thinking, I'm going to be the queen of New York real estate.”
Corcoran: Corporate bureaucracy would have killed the initial Corcoran Report
“Initially, if I had been a big company, and I'd run it by attorneys, vetting, committee decisions, it would have never gone out. The beauty I had as a little guy is I had the freedom to run it.”
Corcoran: The Corcoran Group owed over $300k after 1987 crash
“Well, I was really on the brink of declaring that it was over, but I was ashamed in trying to make back the money I owed to various suppliers like my ad agency the New York Times, but I owed over 300,000 dollars.”
The other half of the tape: Barbara Corcoran's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 4 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jeff Martin 5Daymond John 2Aaron Krause 2Guy Raz 1
Statements about Barbara Corcoran, by other people (1)
Corcoran was initially rejected for Shark Tank before pitching the producer directly
“Barbara Corcoran, by the way, she was initially rejected for her spot on Shark Tank. They went with a younger woman. So Barbara wrote a letter to the producer, and it said, I consider your rejection a lucky charm, because everything that ever happened in my li…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 10
2026 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2021 5 mentions in 1 episode
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Barbara's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Investor, Shark Tank | 1 | 19 | 67% 2/3 | full record on How I Built This → |