Rethinking failure: Barbara Corcoran at TEDxBarnardCollege

very nice to be here I'll start with the story I grew up in a small town in New Jersey it was exactly two blocks wide and one mile long and we had the biggest family in town my mother took her six girls and put them in the girls room painted it pink of course and then she put her four boys in the boys room painted it blue and my parents produce every one of those children from the living-room couch that was between the two bedrooms lesson than that by the way and not on failure I first discovered of the word failure in the classroom I can distinctly remember being in class and not being able to read or write until I was in third grade or there abouts when I started getting the hang of it and being ashamed of myself but I was kind of okay with it I was sent back to the second grade classroom one day after school and I knew the moment I walked in that I was in trouble there was sister Stella Murray saying that she was a nun from hell there was also Elam aloni that all the kids at school called the girl and there was Rudy Valentino not the famous guy but Rudy Valentino the Italian kid that just came off the boat as we said and I was asked to have a seat when sister Stella Marie told me if I didn't learn to pay attention I would always be stupid that was a day I first discovered that I had a label and it was about failure my idea of Hell to this day is being asked to read out loud to have the shame that you feel reading out loud and in a situation where as education whole system judges a child's intelligence simply based on how well they could read or write to certain abilities I learned how to be a loser and I couldn't wait to get out of that jailhouse that everybody loved in school I couldn't wait the day I got out of it and so when I grew up I continued to learn a lot about failure but frankly I realized that that was the best calling car for the rest of my life because nothing was going to feel as bad as that for me ever again all of my singular phenomenal successes that helped me build my business happened on the heels of failure didn't choose it that way but somehow it always worked that way when Ramone Simone who was my first love and business partner left to marry my secretary I thought I would never walk again because I was madly in love with him and he had found me at the diner had taken me out of my hometown and he gave me the thousand dollars to start my business and so when he left me I really felt like nothing and when I finally built the courage to leave that business partnership two years later which was two years too long on the way out the door he said to me you know you'll never succeed without me and I felt in my heart through every bone in my body that I would rather die than let him see me not succeed and it was that insult which really became my insurance policy to continue in business no matter what was happening because I didn't want to set let that guy see me fail when I was asked to give my first speech to a group of 300 City bankers I was honored but as everybody is scared to death when I got up there at the podium even though I had practiced every day for three and a half months I memorize it knew everything about it I got up there and as many people now I learned I lost my voice and when the moderator for the second time said thank you and asked me to sit down I felt such a public shame I swore I would never speak again but the following Monday I realized I had to get over myself and so I volunteered to teach how to sell real estate the only subject I knew at the Learning Annex which was part of NYU at that time and I taught for 12 weeks and as luck would have it as I always found recovering from a failure the very first night in class a short asian woman walks up to me and she says Bob wah you not much money I make like what you know I'm not a meg and it was do you know how much money I make and she proceeded to tell me she made $250,000 in six months my best salesperson I had seven of them at the time was making forty two thousand she made two hundred fifty in six months I had walked in and discovered the orient express.the woman who would become the number one salesperson in all of New York for the next 25 years and be at the head of the whole wave of the Asian population moving into New York I would have never met Carrie she hang at that class if I hadn't gotten over myself I have found that failure and innovation are kissing cousins you get one you work on one you automatically get the other and I was able to make the Corcoran Group the innovator in my industry because we were so good at failure I decided when I had my first year where I had a profit many years into the business I had a great idea and I was going to do it and I knew it was the greatest thing and the great thing was I was going to take all of our apartment's and put them on videotape and now customers don't have to look at apartments all I have to do is pop in a videotape and they could pick out apartment from the lazy boy chair oh it was a great idea well one month later I'm standing the basement of one of my shops ansan right next to Zabar's it's still there in a wet basement with $77,000 of money I blew stupidly on tapes nobody wanted and they didn't want them because I put my sales people's faces and phone numbers on them and they didn't want to hand them to the customer and haven't call the next salesperson so that idea was dead on arrival and as I was starting to cry in my soup my husband Bill Higgins who was a Navy captain came home from a war exercise in South Korea where he was blowing up the North Koreans this is what boys do on weekends that would pay with our tax money and he was all excited telling me oh my god it was amazing in how you do it every year what's the big deal and he said this time we did it in real time on this new thing called the Internet and so I took all my videos I shoved them on the Internet I put them online I didn't know what online meant then and boom boom within the first week I had two sales out of London so I immediately registered every one of my competitors URL so that they would have to call me and ask for the URL as they discovered the thing that was about to change the real-estate industry as we knew it then and can you imagine the advantage I had having a two year heads up and a head start on all of my competitors to horse around and discover what I could do online I would have never discovered online if I hadn't failed with it seventy seven thousand dollars and that was my reward I've learned some tricks about building a culture of innovation and they're not very sophisticated but I share them with you my first is that I made a habit of rewarding efforts more than results and so each of my office had a good idea box a big bright yellow box with a slot on the top is always made for a child and children children salespeople excuse me we're expected to put their ideas in a box I can tell you when I open those boxes every Monday morning at the sales meeting most of the ideas were terrible but I gave out $1 for the good ideas and $1 for the bad ideas and by doing that the message was just keep the ideas coming I made a habit of making a public spectacle of anything that I failed at I remember I had tried to be a host of a new reality TV show years back before it became the big thing and I thought I'm the most qualified person to do it and I tried I auditioned I worked at it and they gave it to a young neophyte salesperson that only worked for me for a month she was 21 22 maybe and drop-dead gorgeous I hated her but I was mortified more than anything else that she was gonna be the host and everybody knew how hard I had worked so I decided to make her the hero told the story about how she beat the old boss out of the whole gig and how she was amazing let's give her Cheers and by making a public spectacle of myself I gave people permission to fail publicly I always gave my salespeople my sales manager a budget to make mistakes sounds like a simple thing but it worked like a dream and I copied what my mother do was my father he worked two jobs his whole life to support us but when he came home he handed my mother his paycheck and she always handed him a $20 bill she called it dad's mad money he was allowed to take the 20 bucks and do whatever he wanted until the next 20 came seven days later and you know what we learned from my father he was so happy to have that 20 and so I dedicated 5% of all operating budgets at every office I ever opened as Mad Money fun money and what their job was to spend it to spend it before the year ended so that they could discover new things and everybody spent that 5% and with that 5% we discovered so many new things I would have never happened if it wasn't pre-funded I've learned about people who know how to fail because I was in a failure business if you're in real estate it's a business of rejection a lot of noes and very few yeses and I made a study my whole life trying to figure out why I had certain salespeople only three or four million dollars a year selling apartments and then I had someone on average making sixty five thousand dollars what's the difference I studied and studied and this is what I found it was never the contacts I came in to the business with which is what the common culture believed because that evened out after the first year it was never how hard they work because some of my worst salespeople work the hardest the only difference between the people that were hugely successful and those that were not where they took less time feeling sorry for themselves they almost had a lower IQ so that if you smack them and hit them down they pop back up and said I'm so stupid hit me again and you know what I learned as a higher to lead a good team I look for that characteristic and everyone I hired because if you could take the hit and keep going coming back at you always hit the finish line and that was a singular difference between my Superstars and everybody else when the stock market crashed in Taiwan I forget what year was I saw it on the 11 o'clock news and what do you think I thought of Kerry Chiangmai number one sales first and all of her business came out of Taiwan and so I called her couldn't reach I called it through the day pulled her assistants called her cell phones I thought she committed Harry Caray for sure but at 6 o'clock now this is like what 20 hours later she rumbles into my office she's very put together woman her hair was a mess her mascara was smeared like somebody had beat her up and what do you think she said Bob wah I exhausted I up all night I get a hundred and sixty-eight new listings what did she do she talked everyone she ever sold a listening to the sky is falling you losing your money a better sell now and then she immediately went out and she hired two Japanese speaking assistants and sold those units to the Japanese that were starting to move into New York City poetry in motion on failure Carrie Chang no surprise at today she h-how'd of how much money did she make last year I'll tell you exactly what she made she calls me every January and says you know how much money I make but now she says I've made my money than yo she's right she made last year six million eight hundred and some one thousand to the penny she tells me okay how does she do it I can tell you how she does it she is great at failure she doesn't have the failure bone in her body she doesn't even know it I remember I got a call from Mark Burnett productions it even felt familiar to me and I don't watch TV and one who looked him up and I realized he's the biggest Hollywood producer and his office was asking me if I would consider being on this new TV show called shark tank I heard what the show was about I said it's perfect for me send me the contract I never read the contract didn't know what I was getting paid I signed the contract expressed it right back I didn't want to lose that spot to anyone else I was so thrilled I ran right after Bergdorf's bought three autograph signing outfits I was gonna Hollywood I was cool I'm so happy and then only a week before I was going on five days before I go I got another call from his assistant who says I'm so sorry mrs. Corcoran we've changed our mind we've hired another woman I couldn't believe it but I was already in the habit of failing and so I sat down and banged out the best email I think I ever wrote in my life I'll read it up to beginning to do you mark I understand you asked another girl to dance instead of me although I appreciate being reserved as a fallback how insulting we'll use you as a fullback a much more accustomed to coming in first but I consider your rejection of lucky charm is everything good in my life happened on the heels of rejection and I cited of course Estella Murray said I'd be stupid Ramone Simone said I'd never succeed with that I'm he was wrong Donald Trump said I'd never see if any of his four million dollar Commission that I had to sue him in state court to collect and I got the Commission and then I went on to say I think you should consider inviting both women after compete for the seat and that's exactly what he did and I won that seat now today I am invested in twenty four or twenty to twenty four I was getting mixed up businesses on Shark Tank working with those entrepreneurs every day and helping people's dreams come true what would have happened if I hadn't stood up and wrote that email and not accepted the rejection I wouldn't have had the job number one I wouldn't have known these people and all those lives would have been changed how important it was that I sat up I also learned after I was on the set for almost two months that they had rejected three times more people had them all signed contracts and only pick 25% and my producer said no one wrote a letter no one sent an email no one objected couldn't they be in those seats today probably but I'm so thankful I wrote mine I've learned to think of failure after everything I've done in life as a lucky charm as a little like a like a heads-up little bright light because you know what I have never had it where I haven't seen that the flipside of that is always the biggest opportunity it just has happened that way for me my whole life all right and I feel that the built my own personal ability to handle rejection is more largely responsible for every success I've had than anything else I've done in business and believe me I've learned a lot and I can do a lot of other stuff but the one thing I do so well is I fail well and so I happen to know I can't say I love rejection that would be lying I accept your job what give me a word let's hear it for rejection there we go that's it thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 453,603

Rating: 4.9190397 out of 5

Keywords: English, USA, tedx, TEDx, Barbara Corcoran (TV Personality), TEDxBarnardCollege, United States Of America (Country), technology, ted x, NYC, entertainment, business, ted talks, tedx talk, Barnard College, ted talk, social change, Athena Center, ted, tedx talks, media

Id: kU1DI8HsYAg

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 30 2013