Barbara Corcoran remembers when her real estate company, The Corcoran Group, was in trouble. Mortgage rates were around 18%, put the date around October 1981. She knew she needed to downsize.
“My mom told me, ‘You’re going to have to lay people off, right?’ She wasn’t a businesswoman, she was a mom,” Corcoran told Entrepreneur.
When Corcoran confirmed the upcoming layoffs, her mother, who worked for The Corcoran Group at the time, said something unexpected: “Fire me first.”
“And I said, ‘How do I fire you first?’ She said: “Because everyone will know that further layoffs were necessary.” And I fired her first,” Corcoran said. “I had to announce that my mother was no longer here. I fired her.”
Twenty years later, she sold her business $66 million.
Barbara Corcoran and her mother Florence. Source: Barbara Corcoran
Corcoran says her mother’s decision helped her thrive and helped employees approach layoffs in another way because her mother led by example.
Florence was later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and exhibited a condition called agitated Alzheimer’s dementia, a separate diagnosis that features symptoms including anxiety. Florence died in 2012 after a nine-year battle with the disease.
Corcoran is now the face of “I would love to know“ a public education campaign promoting awareness of agitation in Alzheimer’s disease, in cooperation with Otsuka Pharmaceutical, based in Princeton, New Jersey, and another pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, based in New York.
“It’s kind of weird for a mother to silently lose her mind when she has Alzheimer’s disease,” Corcoran said. “And you realize that the reality that you always assumed when you were there, the open cabin where you could ask her what was inside, was closed. And she had no intention of reopening.”
Corcoran praised her mother’s organizational skills and instincts. Florence raised Corcoran and her nine siblings in a two-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, and motivated her when she felt overwhelmed.
“She really had a great innate sense that she trusted,” Corcoran said.