There was a great video interview with Larry Levy in Crain’s Chicago Business this week. For those of you who do not know Larry, he is the founder is the Levy Restaurant empire based in Chicago.
Some highlights from the article if you don’t have a few moments to view it include:
“Partnership in a business is like a marriage or a family. Your separate ambitions change over time.”
“Always follow your passions.”
On the people to hire…
“The single most important thing for entrepreneurial success is to surround yourself with brilliant people who are better at what you are asking them to do than you are. Bar none. There is nothing more important than that. It is very hard for entrepreneurs to do that. It’s always been easy for me. I’ve always understood what I’m good and what I’m not good at.”
“A lot of entrepreneurs are not capable of surrounding themselves with people that are wrong that they are wrong and push back some times. And I love it! I only want to be around people that do that.”
Larry talks about how open and helpful people were to him when he started out. It’s unfortunate that Larry feels “I can’t describe why I think this but it’s not as good as it used to be that Chicago is not as open to entrepreneurship as it used to be.”
I reached out to him via phone as I was excited by his short chat.
