Jim Tselikis, left, and Sabin Lomac show gratitude to their early investor in Cousins Maine Lobster, real estate mogul and Shark Tank judge Barbara Corcoran.
It’s been more than 10 years since Barbara Corcoran, New York real estate mogul and Shark Tank judge, invested in Cousins Maine Lobster when its first food truck had only been open for two weekends (something she learned only after the fact).
The reason? “I trusted them, number one, foremost,” fast-talking New Jersey native Corcoran said about the co-founders, real-life cousins Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac, adding figuratively: “I would put my kid in their arms, be gone for five years and I knew the child would be OK. Just gut reaction.”
Another factor? “They were perfect partners. It was clear to me, Sabin could talk a dog off a meat wagon. He was probably one of the best salesmen” she’s encountered. “Maybe Donald Trump is right up there. Sabin, just phenomenal. And then Jim on the other hand was strictly numbers, and organization, he was like a builder. I thought, what a terrific combination.”
Corcoran invested $55,000 in 2012 for a 15 percent stake in the gourmet lobster shack on wheels. “We’re both mama’s boys, so she seemed motherly. We thought she’d really care about our business,” said Tselikis about Corcoran. (When told about the “motherly” comment, Corcoran shot back: “That’s code for, I looked old. ‘This is the nice old lady, she won’t interfere.’”)
Today they have 42 food trucks and counting, six corporate-owned and the rest franchised, a handful of full-service restaurants and an aggressive growth plan. “Barbara got the steal of the century. That’s what happens when you get in on the ground floor,” Tselikis said.
Corcoran, age 73, said she built her real estate brokerage firm, The Corcoran Group, by finding brokers with potential because she couldn’t afford experience. “I love my people, the top of their head to the ends of their toes,” she said. “I wasn’t paying them; it was all commission. We were nobody. I found them everywhere. I was hiring out of a pool of nobodies.”
She pushed the firm to 500 people and grew to No. 7 in the market, she said, but then came the early ‘80s, “a terrible few years in New York when interest rates were 17, 18 percent. People were losing faith.” A large insurance company came to her and said they had 88 apartments they wanted to sell and they couldn’t have an auction because it would look bad.
“I didn’t have an answer: nobody was buying anything. We were starving at Corcoran Group. I was really trying to stay in business, maybe one more week.” Meanwhile, the apartments were scattered through many buildings, “a smorgasbord of losers,” she recalls. “I told them there really wasn’t any way,” and her client said, “You’re a smart girl, you’ll figure it out.”
So she recalled her childhood in New Jersey in a two-room flat, when her mother gathered most of her 10 kids and pointed to the chicken farmer on the riverbank who had seven puppies in a box. “They were so adorable, and there was a line of fancy cars. The people getting out of the cars looked like freaks,” she recalls.
“They had makeup on, they had fancy clothes on, they were New Yorkers! And they were getting in line to buy puppies,” Corcoran recalls. “Look how smart that farmer lady is,” her mother said. “She only has seven puppies and look how many people wanted them.”
An idea popped into her head. She priced the apartments about 20 percent below market. She asked the insurance company to provide financing. Then she announced it was a secret sale the next day, offered only to her brokers’ best customers. “When I hit the sales office, there were 150 waiting in line for the 88 apartments. We sold them within an hour. And then the market turned around. That saved me,” she said.
On her website, Corcoran cites her straight D’s in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. That’s when she borrowed $1,000 and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City. On “Shark Tank,” the hit ABC show where she’s executive producer and contestants compete to get a “shark’s” investment, she has backed more than 80 companies so far.
How does she choose? “I know to trust my gut. I lived life. The only time I’ve had regrets, I couldn’t put a label on it, but once you jump in bed,” you think, “oh, that’s what was bugging the crap out of me,” she said.
Corcoran says she looks for one main quality in founders. “I’m trying to ascertain if the person is good at bouncing back. I’m going to tell you something, there’s no such thing as a business plan that works,” she said.
“The minute you get on the street, nothing goes to plan. You have to develop your business plan on your feet. People steal, markets fall down, interest rates go up three points. You’re going to be assured you’re going to walk into a changed environment” all the time, she said.
Corcoran said she waits about six to nine months after “Shark Tank,” “after the blush is off the rose. I can’t wait for my entrepreneur to call me with their first problem. The minute I hear the ‘victim,’ I hang up the phone. I go over to the wall and hang their picture upside down.”
The co-founders behind Cousins Maine Lobster are “phenomenal at bouncing back,” she said. “They’ve had more challenges than my other entrepreneurs,” and their pictures on her wall are decidedly right side up.
Asked this spring about the worsening economy, spiking inflation and other challenges, Corcoran was unfazed. “Based on my own personal experience, these are the best times to move ahead when everybody’s scared. Because the checkerboard gets rewritten.”
That’s especially true for entrepreneurs. “The best time to move ahead is the worst times. I was never able to move ahead in good times … because my largest competitors had a lot of money. They could out-spend me, they could out-market me. ‘Established’ works against you in bad times because you protect your turf,” she said.
“I can tell you so many times that I could sniff out a weakness in my competitors: Cockiness. They were cocky, big and protecting. These are the golden times.”
One last story proves Corcoran’s point. It was 1993, when she had videotaped all her firm’s apartments for sale, but there was no way to show them easily to customers. “By luck my husband was a Navy captain, and he came home from a naval exercise in South Korea,” where the internet was up and running.
“We did it in real time on this new government thing called the internet. I threw all of those videotapes on the internet. I realized I had stepped into the greatest thing that would change real estate. The next day I registered Corcoran.com, and I registered all my competitors’ names,” before they even thought about doing so.
“I went to No. 1 in two years,” she said. “There’s so many angles out there, if you’re really eager to look.”