00:00My boyfriend and business partner came in and announced he was marrying my secretary.
00:04I couldn't believe it. I thought it was some kind of a joke.
00:07I'm Barbara Corcoran. I'm a shark investor on ABC's Shark Tank.
00:11I started my business when I was 23. It was a real estate brokerage firm.
00:15And I built it and sold it when I was 50. And since then I've been in the TV business.
00:19My biggest belly flop happened one night when I was making pasta for my three stepchildren.
00:25And my boyfriend and business partner came in and announced he was marrying my secretary.
00:30I couldn't believe it. I thought it was some kind of a joke.
00:34But in an instant I realized it wasn't a joke.
00:37And he said, take your time moving out.
00:39I took about a minute, grabbed my toothbrush and got myself out of there.
00:42On the way out the door on that Friday morning, he said to me, you'll never succeed without me.
00:48And I knew everything in my bones that I would rather die than let him see me not succeed.
00:55I then moved on to the cell for my best friend in Manhattan.
00:59And that became the beginning of a terrible spiral of ego.
01:05Now thinking back at him, I'm thinking, why was I so hard on myself?
01:08But he left me for the younger woman.
01:11After all, he had found me. He had given me the money to start my business.
01:15He was my boyfriend. I was the mother to his kids.
01:17I thought I had a right to be there.
01:19Life's not that way.
01:20And so I walked in about a year later when I was able to build the courage.
01:25And I told him, we're ending the business today.
01:28We're going to chop our 14 people in half.
01:30You take seven. I take seven.
01:32You pick the first one. I'll pick the second, etc.
01:34I was able to rent the same space in the same building for my landlord that afternoon.
01:39And I moved my seven people on Monday morning into their new space with their possessions neatly packed in a
01:45box.
01:45And that was the beginning of my second business, which became really my fortune and my love in life.
01:52I published a lot of statistical reports on the marketplace that helped me build my business tremendously.
01:57I looked and I saw that we were number one.
02:00We were the number one real estate agent in Manhattan.
02:03And that was such a thrill.
02:06And I later sold that for $66 million, almost 20 years to the day.
02:11And now it seems so unimportant.
02:13Who cares if you had a younger, prettier wife?
02:16What a joke.
02:17I got to be who I was.
02:18And it wouldn't have happened without that.
02:20It's just a bump along the way.
Comments