Dan Levitan Quotes

When I first decided to open a restaurant, I was turned down by several banks. It was the late 80's and many restaurants were failing. I refused to give up because I knew I had a good concept.

Hard work isn't enough. And more work is never the real answer. The sort of grit you need to scale a business is less reliant on brute force. It's actually one part determination, one part ingenuity, and one part laziness.

The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.

America has always fascinated me; it's a country where you can make it from one side to the other with no money, by hook or by crook.

I just think a hustler's ambition is that I never stop. I start off hustling and said I'll never stop hustling. An ambitious hustler is the one to hustle the hustlers. When I grew up, my heroes were hustlers. Now I'm their hero.

When I was coming up as an entrepreneur, I had to fight for everything I got, and there was no clear roadmap of how to be successful.

I know I'm not going to book everything I go in on, and that's just the nature of the business. You have to keep hustling and not get down on it. You have to keep at it and find your way in. Everybody's story is different.

The greatest business people I've met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

Being an entrepreneur is my dream job, as it tests ones tenacity.

Some people revel in getting their hands dirty. These are the people that make startups grow wildly. People with hustle also tend to be much more agile - they're the water that goes around the rock. These are the people you want around when everything goes wrong. They're also the people you want beside you when everything goes right.

I've studied the lives of the 20th century's great businessmen and concluded self-confidence was instrumental in all their success.

I never had a business plan. I did, actually - I'm lying. My business plan was to get lucky, and I did; that was great. And then my second business plan was to get lucky again, and there, I faltered.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Once you meet an entrepreneur like Jack Ma, you just want to make sure you bet on him. It's not a hard decision.

It's all about hustling, whether it's in Boston or the film industry. I've been hustling my entire life - acting my way into trouble and acting my way back out again. I'm just fortunate to have had the opportunity to apply it in a different direction.

Who's more likely to succeed - someone with high skill and no ambition, or no skill and high ambition? If you're an entrepreneur, you can hire as many skilled people for your business as you want.

One good quality in European peoples is their willingness to take risks. This is the chief source of their success …. Another of their good qualities is perseverance and … hard work.

Entrepreneurs … benefit greatly from being willing to fail, willing to experiment. Good entrepreneurs tend to be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details. They’re persistent on what they’re trying to accomplish, but they are willing to rewrite the details as needed as they learn and as things fail.

You've got to be flexible. If you want to win, you have to do whatever it takes.

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it.

Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.

Entrepreneurship is usually about people executing in the face of other folks telling them that it's not going to work.

As important as hustle is, grit and resilience are equally as important because there's a lot of rejection in our business.

Well, you know, I've always been an entrepreneur. I've had it out of necessity.

The most important characteristics you need to succeed in business are resilience, determination and persistence.