Barbara Corcoran has homes all over the country, but the self-made millionaire won’t shell out for first class plane tickets to travel between them.

The “Shark Tank” judge, who made her millions when she sold The Corcoran Group for $66 million in 2001, said in a recent interview that she prefers to fly coach rather than swallowing the cost of a premium plane ticket.

“The way I figure it is, a coach ticket [costs] about 25% of a first-class ticket,” Corcoran said while appearing on The Jamie Kern Lima Show. “I get the free miles and I can give them away. I have everybody in my family flying on my free miles.”

For Corcoran, being able to give free trips for her family is more important than being “comfortable in first class” for a few hours.

“I guess I could afford to do both, but I won’t because I’ll be in coach feeling really smug because I know I have three plane tickets that could take somebody somewhere,” she said. “It accumulates, you know?”

Having the miles to give away also helps her make sure that her multiple homes are always being used.

“There’s not a single bed in any of my homes that’s ever empty,” she said. “Boy, is that satisfying.”

It’s not the first time that Corcoran has discussed her frugality when it comes to travel. Speaking to CNBC Make It in 2018, the entrepreneur said she “couldn’t fathom justifying” the price tag of a first class or business class ticket.

On top of that, Corcoran said she doesn’t spend money at the airport, opting instead to bring her own pre-packed food meal consisting of fresh fruit, cheese and a baguette or croissant.

“When I sit there and open up my little gourmet meal, I’m telling you, it’s much better than anybody’s getting up in the business or first class,” she said at the time. “I’ve managed to make my own specialness out of a cheap seat.”

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As a kid, Jack Cowin shoveled snow, delivered newspapers and sold Christmas cards for cash. By the time he reached his 20s, it was burgers instead of cards. Fast forward to today: The 82-year-old is a billionaire, thanks to his fast food empire.

Cowin is the founder and chairman of Competitive Foods Australia, the company that operates Burger King as “Hungry Jack’s” in Australia. He is also the largest shareholder of Domino’s Pizza in Australia, and backs a plant-based meat substitute company called v2food.

Before founding Hungry Jack’s, Cowin opened a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Australia in 1969 — his first of many. Then in 2013, he sold off his KFC franchise of 55 stores in a deal worth about $71 million, according to a representative at Competitive Foods Australia.

Today, his business is worth over $3 billion and brings in over $300 million a year, Cowin told CNBC Make It.

Growing up in Canada, Cowin realized early on that he wanted freedom in life. His father was an employee at the Ford Motor Company and was required to travel frequently for work.

“He had a phone call one day, you’re going to Brazil, or you’re going to Mexico, or things like this … When you work for a big corporation, the corporation decides where you’re going to be, [and] what you’re going to do,” Cowin said.

“And as a kid, I wanted to have the freedom to do what I wanted to do. I think I saw that relatively early, because [I saw that] dad’s on the treadmill of here, there and everywhere,” he said. He didn’t want to be at the “whims and beckon call of a corporation.”

So as a child, Cowin spent his time outside of school mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. “I never had to ask for money as a kid,” he said. “I was a sales guy from very early, like 8 or 10 years old.”

By the time college rolled around, Cowin was going from farm to farm selling “trees, shrubs and nursing stock,” he said. He was so successful at it that he was making $8,000 a year while his university professors were making only $5,000 a year, he said.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1964, and went on to get a job selling life insurance he said he was very good at.

“I had a reputation of being someone that could sell,” he said.

By the late 1960s, Cowin had begun to settle down in Canada with his wife and his first child when he one day received a phone call from a couple of high school friends.

His friends had landed a job with the American Kentucky Fried Chicken company and were sent to Australia to do some market research about whether they should expand into the country.

“Since my father had been there [for work], and I was the only guy … that knew where Australia was on a map … they phoned me up and said: ‘You should be down here. You should come and see this.’ So without a moment’s notice, I’m on a plane and I fly to Australia,” Cowin said.

Cowin landed in Australia in February 1969, and spent three weeks there helping his friends conduct research — ultimately finding that there was indeed a market for fast food in Australia.

“At that stage of the game, the restaurant business in Australia was fish and chip shops, Chinese restaurants and fancy white tablecloth restaurants,” he said. Meanwhile, McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and other fast food restaurants were all rising in popularity in North America.

“So at the end of the three weeks, I pay $1,000 as a deposit on a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise [and] if the American company is going to open a store, then I was going to have a 10 store franchise,” he said.

Six months later, he received a phone call saying that the American KFC company agreed to expand into Australia and Cowin had the opportunity to own his first franchise location. But he didn’t have the funds, so he started raising money.

Imagine this “kid comes into your office and says he wants to borrow $10,000, which is probably about $100,000 today or more … he’s got no experience in the business, no interest on your money … how long before you throw him out of your office for wasting your time?”

“The biggest break I’ve had in my life was … I got on my bike and I got 30 Canadians to lend me $10,000 each, so got $300,000,” he said. “Otherwise I’d still be shoveling snow in Canada. I hadn’t had the finances back then.”

By December 1969, Cowin moved his family to Perth, Australia, where he opened his first KFC franchise. “It was like drilling oil and hitting oil on your first wildcat well, because it was a booming success,” he said.

“Then, you open two more, you get into the hamburger business, you get into the pizza business, you get into the food manufacturing business, and today, that business is a $3 billion business and makes $300 million a year.”

Today, Cowin owns 98% of his company while the other 2% is held by some of his original investors and shareholders, he said. “That original $10,000 is $40 million at book value [today]. So everybody’s got their money back, and those that stayed in have done increasingly well,” he said.

When asked what his secret to sales is, he said, “I think the secret is, whatever you do, do it well … The people that lent me the money really backed me as the investment. I was the investment.”

″And an expression [I have is] when you can’t tell the difference between work and play, you’re in the right place … I’ve never really worked a day in my life because I’ve enjoyed it.”

Correction: This story was updated to make it clear that Jack Cowin opened a KFC store in Australia in 1969.

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Do you smile every time you hear a specific song, or light up when you see a certain old friend? Those are both what I like to call happiness sparks. 

We need them now more than ever to thrive despite challenges, distractions, and overwhelming current events. Unfortunately, as I wrote in my recent book, “The Mentally Strong Leader,” there are some days when these moments are hard to come by. 

The key is to bring more happiness sparks into your life — not by chance, but by choice. 

It takes mental strength and discipline to adopt perspectives and make choices that can help bring you joy, especially when negative emotions and thoughts are hijacking you. 

The most mentally strong people lean on these five mantras, which can provide little bursts of resilience and create sparks of happiness. 

In times of adversity, it’s easy to focus on what’s gone. Maybe you lost time, money, or resources when something went wrong with that work project. Or you lost your identity when you got laid off. Or you lost a hangout buddy when your friend moved across the country. 

Remembering to focus on what you still have makes a profound difference. Consciously practicing gratitude improves well-being, research shows. 

In the situations above, for instance, you might be grateful for valuable insights, the loved ones you can spend more quality time with, and a new travel destination, as well as a friendship you can continue cultivating long-distance. 

When you second guess a path you’ve chosen or lament that not everything is working out as you’d hoped, you can get stuck in a negative loop. 

The truth is that there will always be unexpected twists and turns. It’s easier to find joy when you accept the imperfect path and overcome obstacles along the way. 

Think of an accomplishment or outcome that made you happy. Odds are you dealt with some adversity to get there.

When you’re frustrated and someone tells you to “just let it go,” that can make you more upset. It’s also bad advice, since you’ll likely be unable to ignore what happened and how it made you feel.

You can, on the other hand, tell yourself, “Let it be.” That means using a form of cognitive acceptance, which is a surer path to pulling out of a downward spiral.

Don’t try to banish an adverse event from your psyche or change what you feel about it. Let it sit there. Acknowledge and accept that your emotions are legitimate reactions and focus on how you’ll move forward in a productive way. 

When we struggle in the face of setbacks, we can lose perspective. Small challenges may suddenly seem outsized.  

Saying “Big picture, small step” to yourself does two things: 

• It reminds you of the ultimate goal or of the vision of the life you want to live and who you want to be. When you consider a setback in the context of the big picture, it shrinks. 
• It can help you identify one small thing you can do to get back on the path of progress and positivity. That first action can lead to another small step of hopefulness, which leads to another, and so on. 

Think of this as your ABC phrase, inspired by the ABC model in cognitive behavioral therapy. The idea is to remind yourself that adversity doesn’t automatically mean negative outcomes.

The end result of adversity is determined by how you respond to it, and the beliefs you form because of it. 

For example, will you believe that a job interview that didn’t go well was a non-recoverable disaster that clearly demonstrates you’re a failure? Or will you believe that it’s a learning opportunity and an obstacle you’ll overcome, like you have in other situations in the past? 

It’s easy to get caught up thinking that happiness is a destination, that if you can only make a little more money, or achieve some specific thing, then you’ll be happy.

You might tell yourself, “I’ll be happy when I finally get that promotion,” for example, or “If I could just fit into those old jeans, I’d be so much happier.” In the meantime, you let joy slip by unnoticed as you keep your head down, grinding.

Mentally strong people engage in what I call “grindfulness,” a practice at the intersection of gratitude and mindfulness. It allows you to notice and recognize your gratitude for the small positives, even in tough moments.  

It encourages you to draw happiness from finding and experiencing joy in the world around you, right now, every day. 

Scott Mautz is a popular speaker, trainer, and LinkedIn Learning instructor. He’s a former senior executive of Procter & Gamble, where he ran several of the company’s largest multi-billion-dollar businesses. He is the author of ”The Mentally Strong Leader: Build the Habits to Productively Regulate Your Emotions, Thoughts, and Behaviors.” Follow him on LinkedIn.

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It’s impossible to remember every single thing, but how do we know if our forgetfulness is harmless or a sign of serious brain issues on the horizon?

Dr. Richard Restak has written more than 20 books about the brain. In “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,” he dives into normal memory lapses versus serious memory concerns.

Let’s say “you drive to a shopping center to get a particular item, and you go in to buy the item. You come out and you can’t remember where you parked your car,” says Restak, a clinical professor of neurology at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

“I don’t think that’s anything to worry about. People complain about that all the time.”

But if you “couldn’t remember whether you came by car or whether you took a bus or somebody dropped you off, that would be abnormal. That would be something you would seek a doctor’s help [for].”

In this book, Restak offers up these indicators of what he says are normal memory lapses and potential causes for concern:

Normal memory lapses

• Remembering childhood moments differently than your siblings
• Taking the wrong exit on the way home
• Forgetting the names of people you just met or have only seen a few times
• Needing a shopping list for groceries
• Forgetting where you parked your car

Potential signs of serious memory concerns

• Forgetting how to play games you’ve played often and are really good at, and not remembering what’s already happened in the game as you’re playing
• Not being sure how you arrived at a place (by car or bus, driving yourself or being driven by someone else)

Many of the memory lapses people worry about are actually fairly common, Restak says. But, you should still challenge yourself by engaging in exercises to sharpen the muscle.

Restak himself completes a memory challenge each morning. He writes down 10 words before leaving the house to walk his dog and recites them from memory when he returns.

“Avoid boredom, stay challenged,” he says.

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If you want to earn six figures while working from home, you might want to consider a career in data analytics.

Data analysts collect, organize and interpret raw data to better understand how a business is performing. They use tools like Excel, SQL and Tableau to identify trends and create visualizations, and look at metrics like sales, website traffic and regulatory risks, to help organizations work smarter.

The job “drives so much,” in terms of business operations, Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster, tells CNBC Make It. 

Data analytics is a rapidly growing field that can offer competitive salaries, strong job security, and flexibility, says Lisa Gevelber, a vice president at Google and the founder of the company’s online training program, Grow With Google.

As businesses increasingly rely on data to drive decisions — from optimizing workflows to predicting customer behavior — the demand for skilled data analysts has increased. Data analytics was one of the most sought-after skills this year, according to a June 2024 report from freelance marketplace Upwork.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the number of data analytics and science jobs will grow at least 30% in the next decade — more than three times faster than the average for all other occupations.

On Google, searches for “data analytics skills” and “data analytics jobs” have hit a five-year high in 2024. There are currently close to 300,000 unfilled data analytics jobs in the U.S., Gevelber added.

Here’s how to land a job in data analytics — and where to find the best opportunities:

Companies are increasingly hiring data analysts without bachelor’s degrees amid a labor shortage in the field.

Most data analytics jobs require at least a high school diploma or GED, as well as the completion of an online certification or training. Google, for example, offers a $49/month data analytics certificate as part of Grow with Google. Organizations like IBM and CompTIA also have comparable courses.

Data analysts should be adept at working with spreadsheets and coding languages, visualizing and presenting data findings, and, above all, problem-solving, says Gevelber.

She also recommends learning how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to clean and structure data, write code and brainstorm ideas for data visualizations

Candidates who can do that will have “a huge leg up in the job search,” Gevelber added. “There’s a lot of people in the data analytics field that haven’t figured out how to do that yet, but it can make you so much more productive in this kind of highly technical job.”

Data analysts are needed across all industries, but there’s a strong demand for talent in the manufacturing, health care, tech and finance fields, according to recent research from Lightcast. 

Other popular data analytics roles are business systems analyst, data architect and database administrator.

The median pay for entry-level data analytics jobs is about $93,000, according to Google’s data analytics career certificate page. More experienced data analysts, however, are pulling in a median salary of $110,000 according to Glassdoor.

Recent searches on Indeed and ZipRecruiter reveal dozens of open remote data analyst positions, some of which pay upwards of $150,000 a year.

“It doesn’t matter what part of the world you live in or what industry you’d like to work in,” says Gevelber. “The demand for people who understand data and who can make sense of it and use it to guide important business decisions is huge. Everybody needs data analysts.”

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