Use What You've Got and Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom

by Corcoran, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9781591840022
• ISBN10: 1591840023
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-10
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover

Summary

Corcoran illustrates her mother's wisdom and insight with 25 "how to's" for getting ahead in business. Each lesson is brought to life with real business scenarios, an outrageous childhood adventure story, and tips garnered from Corcoran's years in the most competitive real estate market in the world.

Author Biography

Barbara Corcoran is a self-made business baroness. Founder of the Corcoran Group, New York's premier real estate company, Corcoran is one of the most powerful brokers in the nation.

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction: 10 Kids, 1 Bath	p. xi
If you don't have big breasts, put ribbons on your pigtails	p. 1
Paint the rocks white and the whole yard will look lovely	p. 9
If the sofa is ripped, cover it with laughter	p. 16
Use your imagination to fill in the blanks	p. 23
Offer the bigger piece, and yours will taste even better	p. 31
Put the socks in the sock drawer	p. 39
If there's more than one kid to wash, set up a bath time routine	p. 51
If you want to be in two places at once, borrow a reel-to-reel	p. 58
It's your game, make up your own rules	p. 70
There's always room for one more	p. 78
Go play outside	p. 86
When the clubhouse is quiet, they're probably not making spaghetti	p. 99
If you want to be a cheerleader, you better know the cheers	p. 107
Go stand next to Nana and see how big you are!	p. 119
If you want to get noticed, write your name on the wall	p. 128
Sweep the corners and the whole house stays clean	p. 137
In a family, everyone helps mash the potatoes	p. 147
Moms can't quit	p. 154
When there are ten buyers and three puppies, every dog is the pick of the litter	p. 158
Jumping out the window will make you either an ass or a hero	p. 169
You have the right to be there	p. 179
You've got to bully a bully	p. 192
Never be ashamed of who you are	p. 199
The joy is in the getting there	p. 209
Bonus Manual! What I Wish Every Salesperson Knew	p. 217
Credits	p. 245
Index	p. 255
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

1 If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your PigtailsThe story of my billion-dollar business starts like this: I borrowed a thousand dollars from a friend. Okay, I didn't borrow it. He gave it to me. And he wasn't a friend. He was a boyfriend. But when I moved into my first apartment on East Eighty-sixth Street with two roommates, I did have a thousand dollars to start a real estate company. It seemed so simple. There'd be virtually no overhead! I'd probably rent two, maybe even three, apartments a day, and we'd be running at a profit by the second Sunday of every month. "All the rest will be gravy," I told my business partner/boyfriend, Ramòne Simòne. "And we'll share the gravy evenly," he added. Or almost evenly-49 percent for me and 51 percent for him. After all, he explained, he was the one risking the money. * I was wiping the counter of the Fort Lee Diner the first time Ramòne walked in. It was a quiet night. There were only a few customers in the diner, and the other waitress, Gloria, had them all. Well, Gloria and her two well-rounded friends. Gloria was built like Dolly Parton with a big bleached-blond swirl of cotton candy hair. Her breasts were the specialty of the house and had the power to lure men off the street, even if they weren't hungry. She could carry six cups of coffee stacked on top of them, and never spill a drop. Gloria and her dynamic duo had put the Fort Lee Diner on the map, and watching the twins bounce around the diner had become sport in Fort Lee. I was watching her work the front section and, in an effort to feel busy, I was wiping the barren Formica landscape in front of me with a soggy white rag. The double aluminum doors at the far end of the diner opened and in walked my destiny. I knew he was there before I ever looked up. With his dark skin and jet-black hair, he was unlike the working-class customers who frequented the place. In his blue aviator shades, he was different, probably from a land very far away. At least across the river, I figured. I had seen his crisp, white flat collar and rich dark suit on only one other person in my twenty-one years-Irvin Rosenthal, the elderly owner of the Palisades Amusement Park. The Park hovered atop the cliff above our house like a blinking, flashing, whirring spaceship. During the summers of my childhood, when Mr. Rosenthal drove down Undercliff Avenue in his black limousine, all the kids of Edgewater ran up to his car like chickens to the feet of a farmer's wife, each of us hoping to get more than our fair share of free ride tickets. In his finery, Mr. Rosenthal was like a king. We all knew he was rich. Besides the fact that he owned the amusement park, he just smelled different from all of us river rats. Ramòne smelled different, too, I decided, even from across the room and over the thick aroma of frying bacon and eggs. Instead of asking to sit in Gloria's station, he looked at the manager and, with a quick lift of his chin, pointed toward me, the young innocent behind the counter. He walked across the diner, strutting like a pigeon. My eyes met his blue aviator shades. Finally, I thought, as he took a seat at the second stool, an interesting customer. He ordered a cup of tea, and while I banged in and out of the swinging kitchen door, he sat and sipped it, hardly moving, just watching as I worked my counter. I loved my counter. It was my territory, and everything that went on there was under my control. There were nine stools and every third one had a setup: glass sugar container, ketchup bottle, salt and pepper shakers, and a tin filled with white napkins. Since I was stuck behind the counter face-to-face with my customers, I often served as their dinner companion. So I made the most of it and entertained them with conversation. Ramòne told me he was from the "Basque Country." I didn't kno