How Michael Bloomberg Works

So there I was, 39 years old, and essentially hearing, here's $10,000,000 and your history. John Guffried, managing partner of Wall Street's hottest firm, told me that my life at Solomon Brothers was finished. It's time for you to leave, he said. I was terminated from the only full time job I'd ever known and from the high pressure life that I loved. This, after fifteen years of twelve hour days and six day weeks. Out. Fired. Most of the 63 partners were asked to stay on as employees of the new company. Not me though, and a half a dozen other guys were pushed out at that time as well. Was I sad on the drive home? You bet. But as usual, I was much too macho to show it. And I did have $10,000,000 as compensation for my hurt feelings. If they had said we had another job for you, I'd have done it in a second. Just as I did at an earlier career turning point in 1979 when Billy and John told me to give up my sales and trading responsibilities and supervise the computer systems area. I was willing to do anything that they wanted. It was a great organization and I would have been happy to stay. I would have never left voluntarily. Afterward, I didn't sit around wondering what was happening at the old firm. I didn't go back and visit. I never look over my shoulder. Once finished, gone. Life continues. So that is from the beginning of the book that we talked about today, which is the autobiography of Michael Bloomberg. It is called Bloomberg by Bloomberg, and he's describing the fact that getting fired was one of the best things that ever happened to him. There's a great line by Steve Jobs that comes to mind where he says that sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick, but don't lose faith. And so Bloomberg said, I didn't look back. He was going to take the 10,000,000 that he got from sale of the company and jump right back into the arena, this time as an entrepreneur. And so Bloomberg grew up working class. His parents didn't have a lot of money. I'm gonna skip over childhood. I wanna go right into when he went to Harvard Business School, and this is right at the end of Harvard. Really, he's not sure what to do after college. Says my two years at Harvard were well spent. Harvard's case method teaching honed my analytical skills and sharpened my communication abilities. The academic standards there were superior, but not what I would call outstanding. There were some very bright students in my class, some classmates I thought not exactly intellectually gifted, and a few that I considered total frauds who could only talk a good game. Those who I thought were smart generally did well later in life. Those who I considered dummies did less well. The …