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Barbara Corcoran is one of Shark Tanks longest-running sharks, with an estimated net worth of approximately $100 million. But shes also one of 10 kids from a working-class family. By age 23, shed held more than 20 jobs. By 52, she sold her real estate company for $66 million. Corcoran knows how to build wealth. Her financial strategies are bold and unconventional. They buck traditional financial wisdom andfull disclosurethey can be also risky. But could they help you build wealth? 1. Dont Bother Saving Money Ive never saved a dime my whole life, Corcoran told CNBC Make It in 2023. Rather than letting her money sit idly in a bank account, Corcoran immediately identifies the best way to spend anything she earns, often investing it into something with the potential to grow her wealth. Of course, investing all your earnings is risky. No one knows when an unexpected expense or income loss is coming and youll need to live on your savings. But consider the root of Corcorans advice: How much money can you safely risk investing in yourself or a business venture you believe in? How much money could you reasonably put into a stock or other fund with the potential to grow at a higher rate than your savings account? 2. Be The Highest BidderOn Valuable Assets I am always willing to overspend on any property thats good, Corcoran said in an interview. Overspending on anything might sound counterintuitive, but Corcoran is specifically referencing quality assets with high growth potential. Corcoran especially believes in using this principle for real estate investments. She says that if youre willing to spend more than anyone else on a property you know is quality and be patient, you will eventually make that extra money back and then some. 3. Put All Your Eggs in One Basket One piece of advice people hear all the time, and I just dont believe it, is Diversify. Dont put all your eggs in one basket, Corcoran told CNBC Make It. Diversification is investing in different areas so you dont lose everything from a downturn in one area of the economy. In Spring 2025, you might hesitate to even put all your literal eggs in one basket, but Corcorans advice here is about investing in areas where you have expertise rather than diversifying just for the sake of it. Corcoran has historically focused all her money in real estate, where she can constantly leverage her knowledge and experience to evaluate current and potential investments. Corcoran isnt alone in this view. Warren Buffett famously called diversification protection against ignorance. His late Berkshire Hathaway cochair Charlie Munger also referred to the practice as diworsification. Both investors made billions by focusing their investments in industries where they were already experts. Focused investments can lead to outsize returnsbut also outsize losses, so the expertise piece of Corcorans advice is vital. Dont just toss all your money into one thing you dont understand, she said. Stick to what you know.
Category:
E-Commerce
When President Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariffs against America’s trading partners around the world, Ethan Frisch and Ori Zohar were paying close attention. As the cofounders of the single origin startup Burlap & Barrel, they do business with dozens of small farmers around the world. They source berbere from Ethiopia, adobo from Puerto Rico, black Urfa chili from Turkey. We bring in spices from countries where they are grown in particular ways, using heirloom varieties, says Zohar. We cannot just buy these spices here in the United States. Many are not grown here at all. All of the U.S.’s trading partners has been hit by tariffs; the question is just how big the tariff is. Burlap & Barrel is just one example of a small American company whose business will be adversely hit by these tariffs. Yesterday’s news means Zohar and Frisch will now have to pay at least 10% more for the products they import. The business partners are now scrambling to figure out how to manage this crisis. We’re a small business, Frisch says. We don’t have strategic reserves, or relationships with big banks. We’re particularly sensitive to these price fluctuations. Economists say that businesses will make up for these losses by increasing prices to customers, potentially driving up inflation, or paying their suppliers less, which could profoundly harm workers in poor countries. For now, Burlap & Barrel’s founders have decided to do neitherand absorb these costs internally by halting spending on innovation and special projects. More broadly and alarmingly, they are reckoning with how they can continue building relationships with farmers around the world, when the United States now seems like an unstable, unreliable trading partner. An Ancient Profession Frisch and Zohar launched Burlap & Barrel in New York in 2016, which now has a staff of 20, in an effort to make high-quality spices accessible to more home cooks. They see themselves as part of the ancient spice trade that goes back thousands of years. Their business relies on going to remote corners of the world where small farmers have been growing particular spices for centuries. For instance, they partner with women in Afghanistan who harvest wild cumin, and Guatemalan farmers who harvest cardamom. Part of their mission as a company is supporting communities in developing countries. The founders had been closely following Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. But they were surprised by the broad sweep of tariffs the Trump administration announced yesterday. There is now a flat 10% tariff across all of America’s trading partners, and additional tariffs on many other countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Malaysia. Burlap & Barrel sources from many of these countries. The expanse of the tariffs was much greater in magnitude than any economist expected, says Joshua Stillwagon, associate professor of economics at Babson College. I expected there to be a phasing-in of the tariffs or some kind of implementation, but that didn’t happen. Last year, the Burlap & Barrel paid $1 million for the cost of goods; this year, they expect this to go up to least $1.4 million. This money needs to come from somewhere. The founders decided from the outset not to pay their suppliers less. We’re a social enterprise, so paying our farmers less is just a nonstarter, says Frisch. We work with small farmers with little access to other income. We have seen firsthand how hard their lives are, and cutting their income could be devastating. Difficult Decisions But they’ve also made the decision not to raise prices, at least in the short term. Part of the mission of their business is to make good quality spices affordable to more people; they charge $9.99 per bottle for everything on their site. Zohar also points out that if the United States goes into a recession, more people may choose to eat at home rather than go out for meals. So if they don’t inflate their prices, people may see them as a resource during turbulent economic times. We didn’t want to jump to increasing prices for our consumers, says Zohar. Burlap & Barrel does not have the option of switching to domestic suppliers because most of their spices are not made in the United States. But even in industries where there are American manufacturers, switching suppliers is not such an easy calculation, says Alex Field, professor of economics at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. Domestic producers often sell their products at higher prices than their foreign counterparts, he says. So either way, it is going to cost more. Economists expect many companies to pass on cost increases to consumers; unchecked, this will eventually lead to inflation. Stillwagon says the first prices to increase will be on perishable goods, like fruit. But over time, as companies go through their current inventory, it will eventually trickle into many other products. As costs go up, there could be a recession. As companies raise prices on necessities, people are going to be spending more of their budget on those things, he says. As people pull back their spending, they are going to make less profit and hire fewer employees. While the tariffs are causing businesses a lot of stress, Field says that the sheer instability of the economic situation is even more crippling. The Trump administration has rolled out these tariffs in a chaotic manner and there is uncertainty about whether he will renege on them. So Burlap & Barrel’s decision not to increase cost to consumers in the short term makes sense. Trump is so changeable in his views that you may just want to take a ‘wait and see’ approach, and take a hit on profits to see whether the matter resolves itself before you change your catalog pricing and make your customers unhappy, he says. Killing Innovation Frisch and Zohar need to figure out how to make up for the hundreds of thousands of dollars they now have to pay in tariffs. They’ve decided to spend less on innovation. In their case, this refers to things like developing new products, creating interesting partnerships with restaurants and celebrities, and doing special projects. For instance, many people had been asking Burlap & Barrel to create a holiday advent calendar with spices. Frisch says the entire team had been excited about this. But they’ve decided to stop work on it immediately. The packaging for the calendar is now more costly, they were going to source new spices for it, and it was going to take employees’ time. Burlap & Barrel’s approach of cutting back on extraneous spending is going to happen at businesses across the country. And it will have a profound impact on the American economy as a whole. At a time of instability, companies have to be prudent and pull back on investments, including things like buying equipment and spending in innovation, Field says. But this is a key driver of spending and it is what gave American businesses their edge. America is No Longer a Reliable Trading Partner Since launching their business, Frisch and Zohar have been all over the world to build relationships with suppliers. In the past, many of these small farmers were eager to work with American brands, because the country positioned itself as an ideal trading partner. It meant income for them, but it was also a source of pride, says Frisch. They were excited about sending their cinnamon or black pepper to American consumers. But now that Trump has upended the global trading system, this won’t be true for much longer. Countries around the world now see the United States as hostile and unreliable, which could have long-term consequences, even if Trump quickly reverses these particular tariffs. And eventually, this image of America will trickle down to the rural farmers that Frisch and Zohar have worked closely with. Everything has changed, says Zohar. There’s been a radical shift in how the U.S. engages with the rest of the world, and what the American economy represents.
Category:
E-Commerce
The nonstop cavalcade of announcements in the AI world has created a kind of reality distortion field. There is so much buzz, and even more money, circulating in the industry that it feels almost sacrilegious to doubt that AI will make good on its promises to change the world. Deep research can do 1% of all knowledge work! Soon the internet will be designed for agents! Infinite Ghibli! And then you remember AI screws things up. All. The. Time. Hallucinationswhen a large language model essentially spits out information created out of whole clothhave been an issue for generative AI since its inception. And they are doggedly persistent: Despite advances in model size and sophistication, serious errors still occur, even in so-called advanced reasoning or thinking models. Hallucinations appear to be inherent to generative technology, a by-product of AI’s seemingly magical quality of creating new content out of thin air. They’re both a feature and a bug at the same time. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} In journalism, accuracy isn’t optionaland thats exactly where AI stumbles. Just ask Bloomberg, which has already hit turbulence with its AI-generated summaries. The outlet began publishing AI-generated bullet points for some news stories back in January this year, and it’s already had to correct more than 30 of them, according to The New York Times. The intern that just doesn’t get it AI is occasionally described as an incredibly productive intern, since it knows pretty much everything and has superhuman ability to create content. But if you had to issue 30-plus corrections for an intern’s work in three months, you’d probably tell that intern to start looking at a different career path. Bloomberg is hardly the first publication to run head-first into hallucinations. But the fact that the problem is still happening, more than two years after ChatGPT debuted, pinpoints a primary tension when AI is applied to media: To create novel audience experiences at scale, you need to let the generative technology create content on the fly. But because AI often gets things wrong, you also need to check its output with “humans in the loop.” You can’t do both. The typical approach thus far is to slap a disclaimer onto the content. The Washington Posts Ask the Post AI is a good example, warning users that the feature is an “experiment” and encouraging users to “Please verify by consulting the provided articles.” Many other publications have similar disclaimers. It’s a strange world where a media company introduces a new feature with a label that effectively says, “You can’t rely on this.” Providing accurate information isn’t a secondary feature of journalismit’s the whole point. This contradiction is one of the strangest manifestations of the application of AI in media. Moving to a close enough world How did this happen? Arguably, media companies were forced into it. When ChatGPT and other large language models first began summarizing content, we were so blown away by their mastery of language that we weren’t as concerned about the fine print: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” And it turns out that for most users that was good enough. Even though generative AI often gets facts wrong, chatbots have seen explosive user growth. “Close enough” appears to be what the world is settling on. It’s not a standard anyone sought out, but the media is slowly adopting it as more publications launch generative experiences with similar disclaimers. There’s an “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” aspect to this, certainly: As more people turn to AI search engines and chatbots for information, media companies feel pressure to either sign licensing deals to have their content included, or match those AI experiences with their own chatbots. Accuracy? Theres a disclaimer for that. One notable holdout, however, is the BBC. So far, the BBC hasn’t signed any deals with AI companies, and it’s been a leader in pointing out the inaccuracies that AI portals create, publishing its own research on the topic earlier this year. It was also the BBC that ultimately convinced Apple to dial back its shoddy notification summaries on the iPhone, which were garbling news to the point of making up entirely false narratives. In a world where it’s looking increasingly fashionable for media companies to take licensing money, the BBC is architecting a more proactive approach. Somewhere along the waywhether out of financial self-interest or falling into Big Tech’s reality distortion fieldmany media companies began to buy into the idea that hallucinations were either not that big a problem or something that will inevitably be solved. After all, “Today is the worst this technology will ever be.” Think of pollution and coal plants. Its an ugly side effect, but one that doesnt stop the business from thriving. Thats how hallucinations function in AI: clearly flawed, occasionally harmful, yet toleratedbecause the growth and money keep coming. But those false outputs are deadly to an industry whose primary product is accurate information. Journalists should not sit back and expect Silicon Valley to simply solve hallucinations on its own, and theBBC is showing there’s a path to being part of the solution without evangelizing or ignoring the problem. After all, “Check important info” is supposed to be the media’s job. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
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