'Shark Tank' Investor Details Painful Accident: 'There Was a Lot of Blood'

Barbara Corcoran is sharing details of a scary accident that left her bleeding and missing a tooth, just hours before she was set to travel for four speaking events.

The longtime Shark Tank investor posted an Instagram photo showing herself with oxygen tubes in her nose. In her caption, she explained how a simple visit to check on renovations at her new apartment quickly turned into a painful emergency.

“Saved by my lone crooked tooth!” Corcoran wrote.

She said she stopped by the apartment to look at the progress. But as she walked through the space, she tripped and fell forward. In that split second, she had one clear thought: “please, just not my face!”

She landed face-first. According to Corcoran, her single crooked front tooth took the hit. 

“Somehow, my one crooked tooth broke the fall,” she shared. The impact knocked the tooth out completely.

Her injuries were serious. “My upper lip was barely hanging on and there was a lot of blood,” she wrote, adding that she would “spare you the photos.”

The situation could have gotten worse, but help arrived quickly. Corcoran said the building’s superintendent suddenly appeared and mentioned that there was a skilled doctor living in the building who could treat her right away.

That doctor was identified as John Sherman. He stitched her lip on the spot. “5 stitches on my lip later … and I was good to go!” she explained.

Even so, Corcoran faced a new problem. She was scheduled to travel early the next morning to deliver four speeches in four different cities. With her front tooth missing and her lip stitched up, she said she looked “[explicit] scary.”

That’s when the doctor stepped in again.

“Take MY dentist appointment,” Dr. Sherman told her. “I have a toothache and I’m due there in five minutes. He’s the best cosmetic dentist in the city. It takes months to get in.”

She joked that it was “a major upgrade” from her old brave tooth, which she believes is “probably still buried at the scene.” Summing up the ordeal, she added, “Long story short, I knocked out my front tooth and didn’t even get a gold medal for it.”

Corcoran’s fans know she rarely hides from tough moments. As one of the original investors on Shark Tank since 2009, she has built a public image around grit and honesty.

Before television fame, Corcoran built a real estate company in New York City with a $1,000 loan. She later sold The Corcoran Group for $66 million in 2001. On Shark Tank, she has invested in more than 120 businesses and heard over 1,300 pitches. Her biggest success story remains The Comfy, a wearable blanket company that brought in massive returns after she invested $50,000 for a stake in the business.

True to her brand, Corcoran turned the mishap into a story of resilience.

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