Dan Gilbert Quotes

Urban renewal always happens as a symphony of events, and part of the symphony is innovative, optimistic developers with the ability and willingness to transform historic properties.

- Dan Gilbert

You have a lot of great teams in the NBA. I watched San Antonio against Dallas, and they're two great teams, and there are great teams in the east, as well. So it takes time to gel, as we've all seen.

- Dan Gilbert

To process and close models in 50 states and 2,000-plus counties with the myriad of, just, tens of thousands of different regulations, customs, vendors - it's a monster. So the only way to do that is with technology. It really is rocket science.

- Dan Gilbert

On this planet, there is no perfection. If you chose to end relationships because of one mistake, you're going to be alone.

- Dan Gilbert

There's nothing better than people talking to each other, sharing best practices, and opening up communications.

- Dan Gilbert

When we do an investment, we always ask, 'Can we affect the outcome? When buying a company, can we have an impact?' That's a different style of investing than a passive investor in the stock market. To me, that's how you're taking the risk out of it. You know what your capability is and how you can enhance value.

- Dan Gilbert

Fans will express themselves. We will always have the best security possible, as we always do. And I hope that Cleveland and the fans, you would hope that everybody keeps it to a certain level, because anything you do that crosses the line isn't going to look bad for anybody but the franchise and Cleveland.

- Dan Gilbert

Ironically, the original Detroit Stock Exchange once sat less than a thousand feet from StockX headquarters here in downtown Detroit. It is only fitting that we are going to build the next iteration of the world's most efficient market invention almost in the same spot.

- Dan Gilbert

Detroit in its heyday - let's say, 1920s to the '60s - was never a huge downtown-living thing. People lived in the neighborhoods.

- Dan Gilbert

Every loan that we did in the City of Detroit in the 10 years they studied - between 2005 and 2014 - were conventional FHA, VA loans with average interest rates of 6%.

- Dan Gilbert

People my age, we would hear from our parents and grandparents who were raised in Detroit about how great this city was from 1900 to the '60s.

- Dan Gilbert

I'd probably put myself in the top 1% in knowledge of blight in the city of Detroit.

- Dan Gilbert

Detroit's a good investment because, first of all, the entry fee for everything is lower. And, you've got the talent that is here that is ambitious and motivated, so you're going to get in on a much lower cost structure in every way, shape, or form from labor to buildings to whatever.

- Dan Gilbert

People are more optimistic about Detroit outside of Detroit.

- Dan Gilbert

Now that Sacramento is building an arena downtown, they're the only one not in an urban core. The only one. It's really not good business. It's nothing against Auburn Hills, Oakland County or L. Brooks Patterson. An arena in the middle of a field is not an ideal thing.

- Dan Gilbert

Except for a handful of banks that just keep a handful of their loans in portfolio, on their balance sheet, every other loan that's originated in the United States - whether from a bank, mortgage company, mortgage broker - is sold into the secondary market.

- Dan Gilbert

We are driven to win a title. We want to see that day when everyone celebrates because we finally brought a title home to Northeast Ohio. It's what we want, what LeBron wants, what all of us want.

- Dan Gilbert

We want to make the Cleveland Cavaliers a perennial champion and contender. We want people to be part of the franchise for long periods of time if they fit our culture, no matter who they are, whether it's LeBron or anybody that contributes.

- Dan Gilbert

In today's world, social media, people get judged so much by the last thing that happened, I almost feel, in a way, young people get to see that not only is it OK to fail - that's the way you get to championship success, whether it's sports or business or life.

- Dan Gilbert

From LeBron's standpoint, if a guy like Kyrie walks away - that creates doubt. But Kyrie committed right away, and that's a major statement about his faith in us.

- Dan Gilbert

The Midwest has, I think, incredibly hardworking people. You know they're going to be successful because, quite honestly, I cannot work with people from the East Coast - a little bit of variance on the coast - I'm from Ohio, and I understand that.

- Dan Gilbert

The good news is that the ownership team and the rest of the hard-working, loyal, and driven staff over here at your hometown Cavaliers have not betrayed you nor never will betray you.

- Dan Gilbert

Our entire franchise has done everything in its power to put all of our players and its coaching staff in the best possible position to execute when it counts. And to deliver to the highly supportive fans of Cleveland a proud, intense, impassioned, all-out drive to achieve a championship.

- Dan Gilbert

There's nobody you can point to in the world that doesn't make a mistake. The best players, the best business people, the best coaches. So one thing is not going to make or break a person.

- Dan Gilbert

I'm still focused on the flagship businesses: Quicken Loans and RockBridge, the title company, and some of the board stuff in the gaming.

- Dan Gilbert

Regional gaming across the United States has had serious challenges, not just in Cleveland or Cincinnati, but also across the United States.

- Dan Gilbert

People still don't know how good Kevin Love is because he played in Minnesota... you didn't see him much on TV. His passing, his knowledge of the game - the stuff that doesn't show up in the stats - he has so much going for him.

- Dan Gilbert

Danny Ferry did a very good job when he was here and put the franchise up to a certain level, as did Mike Brown, and his contract had ended after five years, and, ultimately, both sides decided they wanted to do other things. No hard feelings at all there.

- Dan Gilbert

StockX's live marketplace will harness the Internet's natural ability to facilitate a better way to transact certain segments of ecommerce. We are going to bring the kind of trading platform and visibility to tangible products that financial and commodities markets have used for decades.

- Dan Gilbert

You can not only do great things for an urban core by moving your employee base there, you're also going to be a better business.

- Dan Gilbert

I think it's natural when a team has such high expectations, under .500 halfway through the season, they're going to go after a brand new coach.

- Dan Gilbert

Above all, the fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as the entire franchise, deserve and need our players and coaches to dig deep within themselves.

- Dan Gilbert

When there were first rumors of us going after LeBron, some fans wondered how we could do that after all that happened. But after the 'Sports Illustrated' letter, every fan is thrilled to have him back. That was so heartfelt.

- Dan Gilbert

The team is in great shape, the coaching staff, the front office. Just things feel really good chemistry-wise across the board.

- Dan Gilbert

The entire NBA knew in 2010 that the best player in the world could be a free agent in 2014. We weren't the only team positioning ourselves for the summer of 2014.

- Dan Gilbert

We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.

- Dan Gilbert

You can't fight the fact that Detroit is a de-industrializing market and it isn't facing dramatic, positive transformation.

- Dan Gilbert

I think Detroit is where muscle meets brains.

- Dan Gilbert

If the Big Bang is true, that means everything that came out of it, all of the particles, all of us, there is a scientific force that connects it all that we don't really know about.

- Dan Gilbert

Blight is like a cancer. This is one of those all-or-nothing things.

- Dan Gilbert

I think that when we strip people down, most of us want the same things. People just have very different views of how to get there.

- Dan Gilbert

People have things that happen between them. I certainly don't keep grudges.

- Dan Gilbert

Kids coming out of college want that urban core excitement more and more.

- Dan Gilbert

Head coaching options are limited.

- Dan Gilbert

I believe in our players, our coaching staff, and our entire franchise.

- Dan Gilbert

We get a lot of emails, a lot of suggestions on the kinds of ideas and things that people would like to do. There's a lot of good ones, but a lot of them are something that the franchise couldn't or wouldn't endorse, just as being not consistent with what the NBA would want or, probably, what we would even want, too.

- Dan Gilbert

Anybody who dies with money in the bank is a failure.

- Dan Gilbert

I think millennials are a generation that's a little bit behind, maybe four or five years behind the previous generation, as far as when they buy a house.

- Dan Gilbert

We like scalable companies that we think we can grow - because of our expertise, operational is consumer-facing. For the most part, consumer-facing, technology-driven process, driven sometimes if they're call center or into the sales type of stuff associated with it.

- Dan Gilbert

Keep your debt low, and ask, Can your operational expertise make an impact? Then you're taking away a lot of the risk.

- Dan Gilbert

Everybody made mistakes for years, but by making them, everybody learned - myself, the franchise, coaches, players, LeBron, everybody.

- Dan Gilbert

People would tell us, 'I love your company, but I want to go to Chicago or Boston or New York.'

- Dan Gilbert

The first thing is to hang on to everybody who is talented, who is entrepreneurial, who wants to make an impact and a change and start attracting ones.

- Dan Gilbert

LeBron James needs to go to another team with two superstars already so he can win a championship.

- Dan Gilbert

First thing I said to him was, 'LeBron, you know this is true. We had five good years and one bad night'. Like a marriage that's good, and then one bad thing happens, and you never talk to each other again.

- Dan Gilbert

Our goal is a title. With LeBron, we are in 'win now' mode.

- Dan Gilbert

One of our things is that money follows; it does not lead. So we want people that are fired up and passionate about their mission... and people that aren't so married to spreadsheets and thinking that kind of voodoo controls the future. Because it doesn't.

- Dan Gilbert

The efficiency, credibility, and liquidity of the financial markets have been foundational to the largest economy in the world.

- Dan Gilbert

Some people think they should go to Heaven but not have to die to get there. Sorry, but that's simply not how it works.

- Dan Gilbert

A lot of the problems in the mortgage world, people said, were because our competitors were evil. But a lot of it was a lack of technology - bad processes and systems.

- Dan Gilbert

A mortgage transaction is very complex, very complicated, and very localized - the rules are not just by state but by county, sometimes even by municipality.

- Dan Gilbert

There's an energy in an urban core that you just don't get anywhere else.

- Dan Gilbert

I just think that everything is symbolic, and who you are determines everything that you do, small moves and big moves.

- Dan Gilbert

If you were blessed with a fortunate position... why wouldn't you want to impact the world around you as much as possible?

- Dan Gilbert

As a franchise, we don't have any different expectations than anyone else.

- Dan Gilbert

I was always trying to get people to fix things that are wrong. Now, it was, 'How do I make things that are going good go better?

- Dan Gilbert

In my view, if you want to get ahead and build wealth, you have to get over your delusion that something only has value if you can measure it.

- Dan Gilbert

It's time for people to hold these athletes accountable for their actions.

- Dan Gilbert

Some borrowers are pretty damn good at fraud.

- Dan Gilbert

I don't think we'd be the business that we are today if we were spread out in the suburban areas.

- Dan Gilbert

It's all about connectivity - not just technical connectivity but geographic connectivity. That's what makes a city go.

- Dan Gilbert

When we grew up, we wanted to do two things: to own a sports team and a casino.

- Dan Gilbert

People want entertainment, a whole night of it, a whole experience.

- Dan Gilbert

I think I've interviewed probably 1,500 people in my 24-year business career.

- Dan Gilbert