Barbara Corcoran: How Overcoming Dyslexia Primed Her for Business Success
Written by
Laura Bogart
Edited by
Kristen Mae
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When you imagine the most successful entrepreneurs or moguls, you probably think of them as straight-A students. The kind who are good at everything they set their minds to, often with minimal effort. You look at their success and think you could never achieve anything similar.
Well, if you’ve ever watched an episode of Shark Tank featuring Barbara Corcoran, you’ve seen someone whose story proves you wrong. Before she was a powerhouse in real estate, acclaimed author, and your favorite shark, she was a young woman who got straight Ds on her report card. That’s right — even someone as accomplished as Corcoran had obstacles to overcome.
The mogul has been transparent about living with dyslexia, a learning disorder that can make it more difficult to spell and read. Refusing to be hampered by the condition made Corcoran work harder and helped prime her for success. There’s a lot you can learn from her journey.
She Saw an Obstacle as an Opportunity
Like many people, Corcoran was able to succeed because she had an early champion at home: her mother. Seeing her daughter feeling humiliated and struggling in school, she told young Barbara not to think of her disability as a roadblock, but as an opportunity to come up with creative detours to get to her destination.
In a profile piece on Corcoran for the Dyslexia Help site at the University of Michigan, the bond between mother and daughter emerged as the kernel of Corcoran’s success. Her mother told her to think of her dyslexia as a gift that encouraged her to solve problems by using her imagination to essentially fill in the blanks.
Corcoran began to see challenges as opportunities to flex her creativity, allowing her an intellectual dexterity that would help her rise in the business world.
She Grew a Thicker Skin
Though Corcoran didn’t necessarily have a name for her experience until she watched her own son endure the same struggles in school, she understood that the time she spent getting straight Ds and second-guessing (or third-guessing) her abilities helped her toughen up internally. This thicker skin became the armor she needed to succeed in business.
In an interview with the podcast “Lessons in Dyslexic Thinking,” Corcoran admitted she learned to get back up and brush off failure after enduring so much of it as a younger person. She shared that being dyslexic made her more determined to deal with rejection since it basically became “second nature.”
Corcoran explained: “You hit me on the head, and I bounce up and say, ‘Hit me again!’ Most people would say that’s stupid. But I say that’s a gift — that you can take that hit, again and again and again, because it’s no big deal. You’ve been doing that since you were a little kid.”
She’s Willing to Out-Try Everyone
As a guest on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show,” Corcoran recently outlined how her relationship with failure sharpened her resolve to “out-try” the competition. Her advice to the many parents who approach her asking for help building confidence in kids with learning disabilities is simple: Let them try more without swaddling them away from learning the value of getting back up again after a defeat.
She also emphasized that it’s perfectly OK for parents to set the expectation of not achieving a goal right away. The act of giving it their all is what matters most. It teaches resilience and the value of hard work — lessons Corcoran had to learn herself.
“I’ll out-try anyone in the universe … and I’ll win because of it,” she said, adding that showing a willingness to try can reshape your vision of yourself. You begin to see yourself as a person who is committed to your own success.
“The reason I’m confident is because I know I’ll out-try anybody. I know I’ll always show up. I know I’ll always get back up,” she added.
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