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 play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses? I had 22 jobs by the time I turned 23

and they opened my eyes wide as to what I was good at and just as much so what I

wasn't.

My worst job was at as a nurses aide.

This taught me that I couldn't do math and I reversed numbers.

I was working in the cancer ward of the hospital reversing the temperature charts of every patient there and every time somebody dropped dead I thought I had killed them.

That wasn't the job for me. My very best job was waitressing because it prepared me for the real estate

sales career that I was about to go into when I was 23. I worked long hours. I was able to think on my feet when things went wrong like

dumping coffee on someone's lap I learned to use my charm to get me where I

wanted to go and I learned that if I could be really good at what I did I made higher tips a

prelude to earning higher commissions when I become a real estate agent. My competitor

at the next counter in one of my waitress and gigs taught me the most valuable

lesson on marketing.

She was a blonde bombshell of a woman who was able to balance two coffee cups on each breast, two more in each hands for a total of eight.

I couldn't make this stuff up and every man in Fort Lee was waiting on the concrete

steps to sit at her counter instead of mine. But I realized if I were to tie my long blonde

hair and pigtails and put ribbons on the end of them to match my little red pinofour.

Some of the men started coming to my counter, learning that men are just as

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