- 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."
(upbeat music)
You got your perspective.
I just want to be happy, don't you want to be happy?
- All right, first up,
we're kicking off the show with Shark, Barbara Corcoran.
Her credits include straight Ds in high school and college.
She had 20 jobs by the time she turned 23.
And then she borrowed $1,000, quit her job as a waitress,
and started a tiny real estate company in New York City
that is now a $5,000,000,000 real estate business.
Welcome Barbara!
- Hey, my pleasure to be here.
I love Gary, I'll do anything for him.
- Barbara, it's great to see you.
It's always great to see you.
Happy holidays and pending new year.
We don't have a lot of time, so I'm gonna get right into it
cause I know a lot of people were excited
that you were 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?
- Yes. - Cause I think there's
probably four or five out there, okay.
- Yes you are.
- Number 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.
Listen hard and see what they need.
And I think the first thing they need is they want safety.
And that ain't gonna go away either.
And when I say safety, I think you have to put safety first.
Customers demand it,
and you don't have to worry about how to pay for it.
Because you can't afford to worry about how to pay for it,
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 distancing protocols
that we've all recently encountered
are here to stay as well.
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 masks for travel.
I think it's all, we're gonna just see a softer version
of the same old and it ain't gonna go away.
But safety is what people care about now
and they will continue- - How, how,
how long do you, let me jump in on that one.
- Yeah.
- 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 gonna go away.
Would you travel in an airplane,
whether your 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 a mask forevermore.
I don't want to catch what's going around.
You know, nothing's gonna 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. - Yeah.
- But I think part and parcel of that
is you need to go to where the customer is.
I have one business named Cousins Maine Lobster,
a large franchise of lobster trucks.
- Yes, I like those guys.
- Yeah, those guys, I think you interviewed Sabin-
- Yeah.
- Yeah, a smart entrepreneur. - Smart.
- But the moment Covid hit, that guy had pivot,
I hate the word pivot but I'll have to use it
because I don't know what to substitute.
Oh, he turned his business around,
there's a new substitute I can use.
With contactless pickup,
communicating where his trucks are gonna 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 that he needed to go
to where the customer was comfortable being.
I also have a business that's my most successful business
named Comfy, and what it is is a wearable sweatshirt
and what they did is they had $150,000,000 in sales
in big box stores that were sent back to them
when Covid hit because the big box stores
they were merchandising to had closed.
What were they gonna do?
They increased their sales online, turned up a website
that they hadn't taken seriously as before,
and they turned a $150,000,000 in sales
into $250,000,000 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 this season
on Shark Tank unless I felt that the entrepreneur
was almost a borderline genius on social media
because I know were gonna have to rely
on the social media platforms forevermore
because we have spoiled our customers with this
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,
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.
- Barbra, real quick on that.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
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, everyone used direct mail,
but the way I was able to become
extremely successful with it
is that I used postcards
because I watched people at home, including myself,
and I didn't open junk mail. - Right.
- But a postcard I was forced to read.
That's what we used, yes.
- So you paid, 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
cause I'm too selfish, I want my own stage wherever I am
and I got in on a postcard.
What was more effective than the postcard campaigns
I constantly ran, was buying billboards
10 cents on the dollar.
- Remnant inventory, right? - Remnant inventory.
- I did the same thing for one of my brands.
- In New York and that put my brand frontline and center,
billboards were the king.
And then also what a lot of people didn't know then
that I took full advantage of,
was I bought remnant space in the New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal previously saved for retailers.
But when I checked into their rules,
retail was not the rule, it was just ShopRite
and everybody was using them,
and I started putting full page advertisements
for all my properties that looked at a billion
when I really had 10 cents on the dollar on that as well.
- It's funny, 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- - Wow.
- Cause I was advertising as like a kid for my dad's store.
And I think the reason social was so natural to me
was all the things I learned between distribution,
under-priced, you just basically talked about
under-priced attention.
You would buy more strategically
around places that people would look.
You took advantage of the remnant cost.
I did the same exact stuff on print and outdoor
and direct, you couldn't really do it
the same way on direct mail,
but the other thing I learned during that year
cause 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
cause I knew when to buy it and how,
my ad mattered to how many people I would get
and I think that 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,
and I'm sure you'd agree with me.
It has to be authentic.
People see through the bullshit now,
you know, 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
cause I find that people respond better
to me looking ugly than to me all dolled up.
(Gary chuckles) (hands clap)
Authentic is key
and I don't think that's gonna change either, of course.
- I agree with you.
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? What's next?"
Like a kid with a curiosity box, right?
You're not gonna be ready for the changes out there.
I mean, change for me, and I don't think
I'm imagining this happening probably twice the rate
it would four years ago, and if your not aware
that today is the single best opportunity
you're ever gonna see again for the next 10 years
of taking over your competitors market place.
His beat, cause you can outperform him,
out-create him, outdo 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 tight.
- You got it. - Most people go on defense.
- It's the time to wake up.
- Barbara, it's great to see you.
- Okay, my pleasure.
- Thank you so much for this 10 minutes, really.
- Thank you very much.
- YouTube watcher, what's up, it's Gary V.
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