#RespectYourElders: Barbara Corcoran (born 1949) is a successful entrepreneur, businesswoman and reality television star. Today, she is most known for her role as an investor on ABC’s Shark Tank.
If you had asked Corcoran in high school whether she would have ever imagined her success today, she wouldn’t have believed you. Corcoran was a D student throughout her education. She later realized that she had undiagnosed dyslexia.
According to Corcoran, “[Dyslexia] made me more creative, more social and more competitive. “There’s a great freedom to being dyslexic… if you can avoid labeling yourself as a loser in a school system that measures people by As and Bs. [The] kids that are so good at school … very often they don’t do as well in life and business because they’re not flexible.”
Despite her setbacks, Corcoran always set out to prove her worth. She tried a number of careers before finding her passion: real estate.
Corcoran started a real estate business in 1973 with a $1000 loan from her then-boyfriend, who was also her business partner. When the pair split, he told her that she could never be successful without him. Corcoran accepted the challenge wholeheartedly. She steadily grew her business, The Corcoran Group, over the next few years, and turned it into one of the first real estate groups to release a regular real estate trends report, The Corcoran Report.
This, along with her business practices, caught the eye of real estate brokerage giant NRT Incorporated. After negotiations that started at $22 million, Corcoran managed to triple the deal and sold her company for $66 million.
Today, Corcoran has a networth of $40 million and has invested in countless entrepreneurial ventures including Daisy Cakes, Grace & Lace and Pipcorn.
To learn more about Corcoran, visit her website here.