#290: 9 Life Lessons from the Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran
Anne Petrik, VP of Research at Vistage Worldwide
Corcoran shares tips for leading and growing
Barbara shared nine lessons that she has learned throughout her life, adding tips on how anyone can apply them to their leadership journey.
1. Perception creates reality.
Barbara advised leaders to believe in the power of third-party endorsement. As one attendee recapped, “YES! ‘Dream the painting, then paint the dream.’ Couldn’t agree more.”
2. Social media is the modern-day billboard.
If you follow Barbara on any of her social media channels, you’ll notice how prolific she is with sharing content as well as following trends. Her advice is to hire someone to do social media, someone who understands it well, and set them free. With a limitless audience, social media is essential to building a successful business today.
3. Balance your staff with expanders and containers.
Barbara firmly believes that you need both kinds of people working for your business. “When you can find the right people, you can hire and build faster,” she shared. Her model for building high-performing teams includes “matching leaders who are the opposite and they will soar.” As one respondent noted, “I love having the vocabulary for expanders and containers. Great framework.”
4. Hire happy people.
Happiness is infectious and boosts morale. The foundation of this sentiment is culture — hire those that contribute to a positive environment and remove those that detract. This leads to her next lesson…
5. Fire complainers.
Complainers bring negative energy and Barbara advised to think of them as thieves stealing optimism, energy and momentum. She likes to “fire people on Fridays,” which is advice she shares on her social channels, as well.
6. Exercise resilience: the most common trait of entrepreneurs.
While there are a lot of traits of top performers, the defining factor according to Barbara is that entrepreneurs keep getting up again “like a jack in the box.” Whether you call it resilience, tenacity or adaptability, those are the most demonstrated characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.
7. Fun is good for business.
If you want to create a company, you must create fun. The more absurd the fun, the greater the team you’ll build.
8. Recognition is more important than money.
With so many businesses offering increased wages to compete in today’s labor market, don’t underestimate the power that recognition can have to motivate others. Observe your employees, their personalities will highlight how they will be the most successful in your company.
9. The biggest successes happen on the heels of failure.
Take advantage of bad times to gain momentum, because according to Barbara “in bad times all the big guys go into hiding…they don’t want to lose what they already have.” Exercise those traits of resilience and adaptability as “the little guys have the corner on creativity” in bad times. In many of the stories she shared, Barbara noted that her biggest successes happened on the heels of failure, fueled by her ability to bounce back with a creative approach.
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