Barbara Corcoran: How to Get Ahead of Your Competitors In 9min

a lot of people watching right now are like but social's not working for me and i'm like the creative is the variable you got your perspective i just want to be happy don't you all right first up we're kicking off the show with shark barbara corcoran her credits include straight d's in high school and college she had 20 jobs by the time she turned 23 and then she borrowed a thousand dollars quit her job as a waitress and started a tiny real estate company in new york city that is now a five billion dollar real estate business welcome barbara hey my pleasure to be

here i love gary i'll do anything for him barb it's great to see you it's always happy holidays uh and pending new year we don't have a lot of time so i'm gonna get right into it because i know every a lot of people were excited that you're gonna be on the show so thanks for kicking us off in your opinion which consumer behavior shift will be key to driving growth in 2021 am i allowed to pick more than one because i think there's probably four or five out there okay yes you are one the customer's in charge i think if we didn't understand that before we certainly understand it now the behavior that we collaborate with the customer is over with they're in charge end of story so i think the key here as an entrepreneur is you have to stay very close to your customer and listen hard and see what they need and i think the first thing they need is they want safety and that ain't going to go away either and when i say safety i think you have to put safety first customers uh demand it and you don't have to worry about how to pay for it because you can't afford you just have to do it i think social media is the fastest and cheapest way to communicate what the safety measures your particular business has done and i think the social discipline protocols that we've all recently encountered are here to stay as well uh things like the dots on the floor i don't expect them to go away next year at this time mounted thermometers at restaurant doors discretionary mass for travel i think it's all we're going to just see a softer version of the same moment ain't going to go away but safety is what people care about now and they will continue how long do you let me jump in on

that one uh you know okay so we see a softening let's say a year from today do you think do you see a time where we go back to 2019 levels or do you think this is now stuck in our culture for quite a long time it's part of our culture it's not going to go away would you travel in an airplane whether you're traveling business class or coach and not wear a mask i wouldn't never again i mean i kind of wanted to do that when people were coughing next to me but i thought it was socially rude nope i'm going on the airplane with the mess forever more i don't want to catch what's going around no nothing's going to go away totally we'll have a residual that will become part of our culture definitely understood keep going okay online shopping is king i mean i almost feel embarrassed to say that everybody knows that okay but i think uh part and parcel of that is you need to go to where the customer is i have one business name cousins main lobster large franchise of lobster trucks yes i like those guys yeah those guys i think you interviewed yeah a smart entrepreneur but the moment of covet hit that guy had pivot i hate the word pivot but i'll have to use it because i don't know what's the substitute he oh he turned his business around there's a new substitute i can use contactless pickup communicating where his trucks are going to be and he moved his trucks out of the normal places that were crowded and he utilized every single large shopping mall parking lot gave people numbers they waited in line picked up they went home with their dinner out and his increase in sales went through the roof within a month and a half pretty sharp but he understood he needed to go to where the customer was comfortable being i also have a business that's my most successful business name comfy and what it is a wearable sweatshirt and what they did is they had 150 million dollars in sales in big box stores that were sent back to the one cove it hit because the big box stores they were merchandising to had closed what were they going to do they increased their sales online turned up a website that they hadn't taken seriously as before and they turned 150 million dollars in sales into 250 million dollars in sales they went to where the customer wanted to be that's exactly what they did and then also again obvious so i hesitate to say it social media is the name of the game i mean i don't invest in a single business in the season on shark tank unless i felt that the entrepreneur was almost a borderline genius on social media because i know we're going to have to rely on the social media platforms forevermore because we have spoiled our customers with us and they want it in social media i think key traits or key entrepreneurs or pardon me key employees that all of us need as entrepreneurs are now the producers the storytellers the videographers uh it's really become the new norm they used to be extra people it was nice a luxury feature if you want but with social media being the name of the game it's not the case anymore and barbara real quick on that i'm trying to

interrupt um when you were building your real estate empire so much of it to do with branding was direct mail a very strong pillar for you in the prime of your growth yes it was but uh everyone used direct mail but the way i was able to become extremely successful with it is i used postcards because i watched people at home including myself and i didn't open junk mail right i was forced to read that's what we used yes

so you paid higher to be your individual postcard versus maybe in a value pack and you feel like even though you were paying more to get into a mailbox you were getting seen more often and that gave you a leg up it gave me a leg up but honestly i never considered value packs because i'm so too selfish i want my own stage wherever i knew and i got it on a postcard what was more effective uh than the postcard campaigns i constantly ran was buying billboards 10 cents on the dollar a lot of people remnant inventory right inventory i did the same thing for wine library new front line and center billboards with king and then also what a lot of people didn't know then that i took full advantage of is i bought remnant space in the new york times in the wall street journal saved for retailers but when i checked into their rules retail was not the rule it was just shop right and everybody was using and i started putting full page advertising for all my properties that looked at a billion when i really had 10 cents on the dollar as well it's

funny i i really think your career and knowing it being an east coast guy you know a lot of people think about me with social media but i got my chops in direct mail print outdoor radio because i was advertising as like a kid from my dad's store and i think the reason social was so natural to me was all the things i learned between distribution under pr you just basically talked about underpriced attention you would buy more strategically around places that people would look you took advantage of the remnant cost or the i did the same exact stuff on print and outdoor and direct not you couldn't really do it the same way on direct mail but the other thing i learned during that era because i was doing so much of it was the creative was the variable even though i was buying the full page new york times ad in the dining section at a really good price because i knew when to buy it and how my ad mattered to how many people i would get and i think that is a big a lot of people watching right now are like but social's not working for me and i'm like the creative is the variable and the creative also must have the key ingredient i'm sure you'd agree with me it has to be authentic people see through the [ __ ] anymore you know if you if your story's not authentic if you don't connect with them on some basis i've even gotten rid of makeup in most of my postings i find that people respond better to me looking ugly than all dolled up authentic is key and i don't think that's going to change either of course i agree with you got one parting shot we got a minute i know these are going quick okay so one more thing please you need to be an entrepreneur that thrives on change i mean if you don't welcome change and look for it seek it out like a missile like what's next like a kid with a curiosity box right uh you're not gonna be ready for the changes out there i mean change for me and i don't think i'm imagining is happening probably twice the rate it would four years ago and if you're not aware that today is the single best opportunity you're ever going to see again for the next 10 years of taking over your competitors marketplace his beat because you can outperform outcreate out do whatever you have to do to get rid of that guy this is the time to do it the best time to move ahead is always in the worst times any smart entrepreneur will tell you they moved ahead in the worst times because the big guys are asleep at the wheel they get tight they get tough most people go on defense barbara it's great to see you okay my pleasure thank you so much for this ten minutes really thank you very much youtube watcher what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times uh i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon