Travels from New York, USA
Barbara Corcoran's speaking fee falls within range: Over $75,000
The story of Barbara’s life, extraordinary success and TV stardom is told in her latest book, Shark Tales. A self-made woman who sees no need to suffer fools or mince words, Barbara has won many fans for her plain speaking and her courage. Inspired by her own experiences, she has an almost preternatural talent for identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and the people who will succeed, even when nobody else believes in them.
Barbara Corcoran was a straight D student who racked up an impressive twenty different jobs by the time she was twenty-three. Perhaps realizing she’d be better off with an employer who couldn’t sack her, she took a $1000 loan and started The Corcoran Group; she is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the USA.
Barbara features on the hit TV show on ABC, Shark Tank. She is one of the “sharks” who decides whether or not to invest in fledgling businesses and then mentors those businesses to success. So far she has invested her own money in more than twenty-two of these businesses.
Barbara Corcoran, Founder of The Corcoran Group & Shark and Executive Producer on ABC’s “Shark Tank”
Barbara Corcoran’s credits include straight D’s in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country: She borrowed $1,000 and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City. The Corcoran Group, the largest and best-known brand in the brokerage business, building the largest and best-known brand in the business.
Corcoran is the author of the best seller “Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business!” and host of top business podcast “Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran.”
Corcoran is a motivational and inspirational speaker. She is a frequent small business and real estate contributor on every major network. Corcoran has been an investor/Shark for the past eleven seasons on ABC’s four-time Emmy award winning show, Shark Tank, investing in over 100 businesses to date.
“The first place I heard the word ‘failure’ was in the classroom…" Barbara Corcoran explains how educational and social systems condemn children and adults, and how we need to rethink our ideas about what precisely constitutes “failure."
Self-made real estate empress Barbara Corcoran explains how she took $1000 loan and turned it into a $5 billion business. Her inspirational story of learning to “fail well” has many lessons for everyone in the audience.
Barbara’s entertaining, witty and hard-hitting talks explain just how to create the perfect team dynamic and lead that team to success. She also shares the secrets to successful branding, explaining how she managed to take a company from a $1000 loan to the most successful real estate brand in New York City.
How She Built It!
Barbara didn’t start out as a success. Her credits include straight Ds in high school and college and 22 jobs by the time she turned 23. Thanks to a lucky break, she borrowed $1000, quit her job as a waitress and started a tiny real estate company in New York City. Barbara built The Corcoran Group into an empire worth $5 billion 25 years later. Barbara shares her unlikely story along with her best tips and tricks, navigating the toughest market in the world. A story of outrageous perseverance and business acumen will keep your audience laughing and learning the whole way through!
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership
Leaders are increasingly recognizing the importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) in building and managing teams, fostering collaboration, and building their competitive advantage. Barbara teaches you to meet the needs of the new employee and their new way of doing business. As remote and hybrid work models continue to be the norm, emotionally intelligent leaders must adapt their management styles to better support hybrid teams, focusing on flexibility, communication, and creative ideas. Barbara inspires today’s leaders to bring out the best in your employees, building cohesive and powerful teams.
How to Spot and Recruit Talent
Barbara knows how to make teams click. She’s hired (and fired) thousands of people throughout her career and repeatedly builds unstoppable teams. She shares her unique insights and the practical lessons that will make your leaders more effective and more able to build a powerhouse team that makes a habit out of winning.
How to Build Your Business Through Troubled Times and Prosper!
Barbara knows that bad times are the best times to move ahead. She survived and prospered amid 18% interest rates, the near-death bankruptcy of New York, subprime mortgage crisis and the tragedy of 9/11. Barbara built The Corcoran Group with a $1000 loan into NYC's #1 powerhouse. With her innovative, outside-the-box thinking, she continues to turn her Shark Tank companies into success stories every day. In this session, Barbara shares lessons from the trenches to demonstrate her leadership methodology on how to adapt quickly, pivot and turn every obstacle into the new opportunity it wants to be.
How to Bounce Back from Failure
Barbara has mastered the art of bouncing back and knows that resilience can be taught. It’s the most important skill that gets you through constant change, tough times and inevitably lands you on top. Barbara will motivate your team leaders with her no-nonsense methodology to overcome failure and move ahead. She'll teach your audience to overcome the obstacles that get in the way and how to master the art of the comeback!
Shark Tank Unfiltered
Ever wonder what really happens in the Tank? Do the sharks really invest their own money and how much money do they win and lose? How many businesses fail out right out of the gate, and which are the most successful? What are the traits that successful entrepreneurs have in common? What goes wrong, and what’s Kevin really like? What unexpected and ridiculous antics happen on set that the audience never gets to see? A fast-paced, photo-packed, fun-filled peek behind the scenes on Shark Tank with Barbara.
Fireside Chat: Ask Barbara Anything
Got a question? Turn the tables on Barbara in this suped-up Q&A session of your choice! Invite your own company executive to lead the discussion and have your audience ask what's on their mind. Barbara's takes the hot seat, entertaining your audience with her unorthodox stories and her always candid, often unexpected answers.
SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn and take away from your presentations?
CORCORAN: One thing: I want them to feel motivated and empowered because I think everybody deserves it and because I generally believe that just about everybody in that audience is in a rut. Maybe it’s not the right way to look at the audience, but even the people who do an exceptional job can get very comfortable doing an exceptional job. Nobody is ever totally happy with what’s going on in their life. I’m really just out to move people forward. I want to get them juiced-up so they feel like they can reach into themselves and get the power to move themselves ahead.
Then I hope it sticks with them because it’s kind of nice to be in the entertainment business and get people juiced-up for an hour or two, but it’s really useless and almost disappointing if they go home and do nothing. I like to think people really go home and act on it.
I do believe I touch a lot of people. I don’t know what percentage, but I get so much feedback about how I’ve made a direct change in people’s lives, and they’re very specific in their compliments. I definitely never leave an event thinking I haven’t changed people for the better. Public speaking wouldn’t be worth the effort if I felt like I weren’t able to do that. It takes too much out of you and I don’t need the money, but I really need to feel like I’m effective in making change.
SPEAKING.COM: What are some of the topics and themes you address in your speeches? What do you want to convey to your audiences?
CORCORAN: As of now, I probably have between 40 and 45 main points. When I do the pre-conference call with the client and the speaking bureau, I try to figure out which are the best ones that fit their audience. I like doing pre-conference calls, because I feel like I really understand who’s in the audience not just by way of age, gender, income level, or what they do for a living, but what’s the problem in the industry.
I would say with 85% of all these industry speeches, the problem is dealing with change because technology has rewritten all of these businesses and a lot of people are having a hard time getting their old dogs to do a new trick. So often I talk about welcoming change and seeing change as the opportunity that it clearly is – and it always is, if you look on the bright side of it and dig for the gold.
I like to tell stories on my best successes. I don’t lecture – I don’t say “You should do this or this”, because I hate it when somebody tells me this. I tune them out, with this attitude of “Don’t tell me what to do.” There’s great power in a story because it doesn’t directly come out and state the moral. People get to conclude it on their own without you shoving it down their throat.
Another reason I like to tell stories is I find that after many, many years, I will run into people who say, “I remember you told me the story about the such and such” and they’ll tell me about an action they took because of the story. So I think people remember stories, but they don’t remember lectures.
Overall that’s my methodology: I just pick out what stories I want to tell to prove the point that I think will be helpful to the audience in their particular business at that particular time.
SPEAKING.COM: Are there particular audiences you think resonate more with your message than others, or do you think that you kind of have the universal message that applies to everybody?
CORCORAN: The poorer the crowd and the less hopeful the crowd, the more impact I feel I have. If I’m speaking to a room of underprivileged women who are all starting their own businesses or trying to, or trying to at least dream about it or women who can’t financially afford to change their life because they have two kids, they’re a single mom – the more duress that someone in my audience has, the more they need hope. They’re most in need of thinking they can take circumstances into their hands, grab the power, and change their life.
With that audience, I try especially hard. I resonate well with those ladies and men, because I am them – I was a rags to riches story. I had more advantages than a lot of the people in the audience often have in that I had parents that loved me, which I have learned in life isn’t always the case. That is such a major card, but otherwise I had all the struggles they had coming up the pike. I’m a walking, talking example of who they could be, and so I’m best able to give them hope.
That being said, the reason I feel like I resonate best with that audience more than everyone else, is because when I come off the stage, rather than asking for selfies, which is the norm today with everybody no matter how sophisticated they are, this particular group of men and women – who haven’t had the breaks in life, really want them, think they can do it and are trying – they’re hugging and kissing me. They’re squeezing me to death so much that sometimes I feel like I’m going to suffocate and maybe die, but what a happy way to go!
“Barbara excites and inspires with her success stories. She is personable and energetic and our attendees thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to hear from her and meet her!” — Diane McClendon, Executive Director, Dalls HR and The HRSouthwest Conference
“With her wit, wisdom and wild sense of humor, Barbara wowed the professional women at our 2014 NAPW National Networking Conference! An absolute major force in the business world, she is a bold, courageous, and brilliant identifier of opportunity and talent. Her business counsel left our conference attendees in awe and completely inspired. I am proud and honored to call Barbara my friend and colleague.” — Star Jones, President, National Association of Professional Women & Professional Diversity Network
“Barbara brings a priceless level of charm, humor, and intelligence. She has the ability to inspire and connect deeply with her audience. Everyone left the session with great excitement to put Barbara’s takeaways into practice” — Stacey Cohen, President & CEO, Co-Communications, Inc.
“I’ve heard many speakers give tips for success, but Barbara’s stories are second to none. Thank you for affirming that fun at work really does work. A standing ovation well deserved!” — Jonathan Flaks, Executive Coach and Speaker
“Barbara was, of course, FABULOUS! She really set the bar high for our speaker series and we have no idea how we’re going to “top” her next year!” — Kimberly Howes, Brand Manager, First Commerce Credit Union
“…Barbara really connected with the audience and was well received. She has a very down to earth style that was appreciated by the sales team. It was a memorable talk.” John Garrigan- SkinCeuticals(Event booked by Speakers Platform)
“Barbara electrified the audience because they knew she had traveled a path in life that had similarities to their own. While others talk about thinking outside the box, Barbara has seldom stepped inside that box. Her words were nothing less than priceless and there is no doubt that the impression she made will be a gift carried by all for the rest of their lives. Everyone fell in love with her!” — Rick Schwartz, President & CEO, World Association of Domain Name Developers Inc.
“By dedicating the time and attention to understanding both our models and the challenges that face our franchisees, your keynote carried the weight of someone who is as invested and committed as they are, it was powerful, on track, needed, required, and well worth it.” — Tracy Christman, Budget Blinds, Inc.
“Thank you so much for agreeing to be our keynote speaker at the 27th Annual Women In Leadership Awards luncheon. The membership of Executive Women of the Palm Beaches and our guests were so impressed by your candor and authenticity as you delivered your message. While the lessons you shared with us were meaningful and very practical, what made it such a memorable experience was to see how someone as successful as you can still be so approachable. The most frequent comment received from your audience was that everyone felt as if they had known you for years, you were one of us. Getting to know you as you interacted with your ′fans′ made me understand that your success was not just due to your knowledge and experience, but also to your charming personality.” — Regina Bedoya, Executive Women of the Palm Beaches
“Barbara spoke at our officers′ conference with people from 16 countries in attendance. She was utterly charming-sensible, accessible and funny. Her insights about the real estate market spill over into personal career development and everyday economics. She′s the one people remember.” — George Lancaster, Senior Vice President, Hines Development
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Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business
The inspiring true story of Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran—and her best advice for anyone starting a business. After failing at twenty-two jobs, Barbara Corcoran borrowed $1,000 from a boyfriend, quit her job as a diner waitress, and started a tiny real estate office in New York City. Using the unconventional lessons she learned from her homemaker mom, she gradually built it into a $6 billion dollar business. Now Barbara′s even more famous for the no-nonsense wisdom she offers to entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, ABC′s hit reality TV show.
Shark Tales is down-to-earth, frank, and as heartwarming as it is smart. After reading it don′t be surprised if you find yourself thinking, “If she can do it, so can I.” Nothing would make Barbara happier.
If You Don′t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons On Your Pigtails Growing up, Barbara Corcoran shared one floor in a three-family house in New Jersey with her parents and nine brothers and sisters. She had few luxuries, but she was blessed with a mother who taught her to have self-confidence. Barbara’s mom didn’t know much about business, but she understood how the world works, and how to make the most of what you’ve got.
After failing at twenty-two other jobs, Barbara borrowed $1,000 from a boyfriend, quit her job as a diner waitress, and started a tiny real estate office in New York City. Today, with just over $4 billion in revenues, The Corcoran Group is New York’s premier real estate company, and Barbara is richer than her wildest childhood dreams.
What can you learn? In Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails, Barbara shares her hilarious stories about growing up, getting into trouble, failing miserably, and then starting over again. In each chapter, she comes back to one of her mom’s twenty-four unconventional lessons, and how it applies in the real world of business.
For instance: If you don’t have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails. When the clubhouse is quiet, they’re probably not making spaghetti. If you want to be a cheerleader, you better know the cheers. When there are ten buyers and three puppies, every dog is the pick of the litter. Jumping out the window will make you either an ass or a hero. You’ve got to bully a bully.
This stuff really works! Whatever your calling, the homespun lessons that work for Barbara will help you use what you’ve got to create success in your life. Whether you’re just starting out, fighting your way up the career ladder, or reentering the workforce, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails is an owner’s manual to your most valuable asset.
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