If you're going to build something from nothing, you've got to know what really works.

I took a thousand dollar loan and built a five billion dollar business, and now I make smart investments in new businesses on Shark Tank. This is Barbara

Corcoran and you're listening to Business Unusual. Today I'm Business Unusual

I'll answer your questions about business, motivation, life, or anything else on your mind.

But first, how to bounce back from failure.

As I built my real estate empire, I got very good at failing and I got even better at getting back up.

It seemed to me all my best successes always happened on the heels of failure.

I learned early to fail and I also... has always happened on the heels of failure.

I learned early to fail, and I also learned that insult can be a great motivator.

When Sister Stella Marie told me in third grade that I'd always be stupid just because I couldn't

learn to read like the other kids.

I almost believed her. I've been using that to constantly prove to the world that I'm

smart ever since. Ramon, Simone, my boyfriend and business partner, left me to marry sense. I later. I later split that company in two, named mine the Corcoran Group and sold it for 66 million

20 years later.

There's great power in an insult and you can use it to prove the world wrong.

When my company began to grow, I blew my first $60,000 profit on a great new idea,

or so I thought.

I took all our property listings and put them on videotape and called them

Homes on tape code for H-O-T-T-H-T I thought I was totally cool and it was a total flop

but I heard from my Navy Captain Husband

that the government was playing war games

in real time on this new government thing called the internet.

...