Barbara Corcoran remembers when her real estate firm, The Corcoran Group, was in a tight spot. Mortgage rates were around 18%, setting the date about October 1981. She knew she had to make job cuts.

“My mother said to me, 'You're going to have to fire people, aren't you?' She wasn't a businesswoman, she was a mother,” Corcoran told Entrepreneur.

When Corcoran confirmed the layoffs, her mother, who worked for the Corcoran Group at the time, said something unexpected: “Fire me first.”

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“And I said, 'How do I fire you first?' She said, 'Because everybody will know the rest of the firings were necessary.' And I fired her first,” Corcoran said. “I had to I announced that I no longer have my mother here. I fired him.”

Twenty years later, she sold her business 66 million dollars.

^{Barbara Corcoran and her mother, Florence. Credit: Barbara Corcoran}

Corcoran says her mother's decision helped her business thrive and helped her employees take job cuts differently because her mother led by example.

Florence would later be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and develop a condition called agitation in Alzheimer's dementia, a special diagnosis with symptoms including restlessness. After a nine-year battle with the disease, Florence passed away in 2012.

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Corcoran is now the face of “I would like to knowPublic education campaign promoting awareness of agitation in Alzheimer's dementia, in partnership with Princeton, New Jersey-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical and New York-based Lundbeck, another pharmaceutical company.

“It's kind of weird when a mother quietly passes out later when she has Alzheimer's,” Corcoran said. “And you realize the reality of what you always assumed when you were there, a cabin opened to ask what was inside, it was closed. And it wouldn't open again.”

Corcoran praised her mother's organizational skills and her gut instinct. Florence raised Corcoran and her nine siblings in a two-bedroom apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey, and kept her motivated whenever she felt down.

“She really had a great innate sense of trust,” Corcoran said.

Related: Barbara Corcoran Sounds Off on NAR Settlement: “It's a Scary Time for Real Estate Agents”