“You really have to stand up for yourself. You gotta get back up.” How Barbara Corcoran used insults as motivation to boost her career.

The Path is a video series where I chat with some of the most influential leaders in the world exploring the successes, missteps, and key pivotal moments that shaped their professional paths. It’s through these authentic stories that we can learn how to navigate our own career journeys.

My next guest is Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran.?

As one of ten children being raised in a New Jersey household, Barbara Corcoran’s early life was a crash course in resourcefulness and determination that she took with her through her entire career. It started as a strong work ethic that led her to take on dozens of jobs by the time she was 23, and ended with titles like “The Queen of New York Real estate” and “Shark” on ABC’s Shark Tank.??

Starting from a young age to her teens, Barbara worked a mix of odd jobs – playground supervisor, hot dog salesperson, printing press assistant, house mother, newspaper dispatcher, nurses assistant, and several waitressing jobs. By the time she was 23 years old, she had already tackled 22 different jobs!?

"I learned what I was good at. I wasn't good at everything, but I learned I was good [at] talking… I could talk a dog off a meat wagon in any job I had," Barbara told me.

While working as a waitress, she met a man, Ramon Simone, who would become her boyfriend – and the person that would lend her $1,000 to start a career in real estate. They founded Corcoran-Simone, a company renting and selling apartments in New York City. Barbara was finally her own boss. She loved it. But things changed when her personal life took a turn.?

“He told me he was going to marry my secretary… he told me I'd never succeed without him,” she remembers. “I knew I was going to be successful just to prove him wrong… I learned then as a leader the power of an insult. It can really motivate you.”

Barbara went on to create The Corcoran Group. The company shot to the top in NYC's residential real estate scene, thanks to her forward-thinking approach and knack for telling a property's story like no one else.?

"The keys to my business were only two things… I knew how to recognize talent and knew how to build on it," she said.

After nearly three decades of trailblazing and reshaping the market, Barbara decided it was time to take a step back and sold the company in 2001 for $66 million.

“I had all this time on my hands,” Barbara said, “I knew I had made a mistake selling the company because I hadn't accounted for two things. I missed my family, desperately. I missed all the people I found, nurtured, [that] came up through the ranks with me. And I also, I'm embarrassed to admit, missed the notoriety. Reporters were no longer calling. Nobody wanted to know me. I was like a nobody overnight.”

That feeling didn’t last long. She was working as a real estate reporter and TV pundit when Hollywood came calling. She was offered a spot on a new show being developed – “Shark Tank.” She accepted and packed her bags to move to L.A but before she could jump on the plane, she got a call?– they had changed their mind.?

“They had hired another woman for my seat… It was the equivalent of Ramon Simone telling me he was marrying my secretary.” But of course, like with Ramon, she took it as a challenge and emailed the producer:

“Dear Mark,” she recalls, “I consider your rejection a lucky charm. Everything good happens to me after I get rejected… I expect to be on that plane on Tuesday and… I hope you let me compete for the seat.”

Barbara landed the seat and has been a “Shark” on “Shark Tank” since its first season.

Her best career advice? If you’re not sure what you want to do in life you have to “play in the traffic.”

“Today, kids very often try to decide who they're going to be… it's like going to a department store and knowing what clothing looks good on you. You have to try a lot on…you have to see what works”

Here are my takeaways:

You don’t have to be good at everything: It takes time to discover your strengths. For Barbara, she recognized that her superpower wasn’t business acumen but creative vision, a tool she still uses to this day to build successful companies. She said one of the reasons for her company’s success was “throwing the bullshit and churning out all kinds of reports and speaking to reporters and not being afraid to just round the edges and keep going.”

People will question your potential, use that as motivation: Barbara faced pushback every step of the way, from her boyfriend's doubt to the phone call from Shark Tank. She didn't just overcome negativity, she used it as motivation. “You really have to stand up for yourself. It was proven over and over again. You gotta get back up. Like a jack in the box, you get hit on the head. You should be smart enough to stay low, but you're smart if you jump up and get hit again.”

Don’t be afraid to try new things: Working 22 jobs by the age of 23 isn’t common but this is what led to Barbara's success. She learned that she didn’t like having a boss, and understood that she had two gifts before she jumped into entrepreneurship: selling and marketing. “I knew those were the two gifts I had, and I didn't have anything much more than that. But that's all you need to succeed….And I wouldn't have known that if I didn't have all those jobs.”