He owns 68% of his privately-held company, Bloomberg News, which is worth an estimated $37 billion. Now serving as the major of New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday gave the commencement speech at City University of New York’s College of Staten Island.

His advice to get ahead in business? Work long hours, never take a sick day and skimp on vacation. He said it’s really very simple…if you’re the first one in in the morning and the last one to leave at night, and you take fewer vacation days and never take a sick day, you will do better than the people who don’t do that.

He also noted his father’s work ethic by saying that he worked seven days a week his entire life until he checked himself into the hospital to die.

Bloomberg’s message could be summed up in a sport’s metaphor, “you’ve got to be willing to pay the price.”

What Bloomberg didn’t mention was the need to have a controlling interest in a successful company that will grow over time which creates substantial wealth for the owners. Of course there are certainly things that matter in one’s life as well…the quality of life, family, impact of your contributions, etc.

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurs & Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.