McHugh Michael

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Happiness Before Success: What Zappos’ Tony Hsieh Taught Me About Freedom

3 Comments / Entrepreneurship, Personal Growth /

Tony Hsieh founded Zappos, an online shoe company that Amazon eventually bought for over a billion dollars. Before that, he co-founded Link Exchange, an ad network Microsoft bought outright. Somewhere between these two exits, Hsieh arrived at a counterintuitive conclusion: happiness before success mattered more to him than anything else. Delivering Happiness is deceptively simple […]

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Friday Five — Focus on What You Can Control, Ignore What You Cannot, Turn Words Into Action

Friday Five, Newsletter /

Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 314 | January 2, 2026 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week Rebirth Brass Band, a New Orleans group, was founded in the early 1980s by Phillip Frazier, his brother Keith,

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December Reading List: 4 Best Books I Read in December 2025

Books /

December gave me space to look back at what I’ve read over the past year and where that reading is leading me next. My December reading list includes Land’s Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It, Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations, Hetty: The Fascinating Story of America’s Richest Woman,

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November Reading List: 4 Best Books I Read in November 2025

1 Comment / Books /

The Thanksgiving holiday, like Christmas, gives me a natural pause to reflect on what I’ve read this year and where I want my reading to take me next. My November reading list includes Sam Walton: Made In America, The Red Bull Story: The Unbelievable Success of Dietrich Mateschitz and His Energy Drink Empire, It’s How

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Friday Five — Turn Words Into Actions, Waste No Time, We Must Do

Friday Five, Newsletter /

Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 313 | December 26, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week Paul Simon is an American singer and songwriter, best known both as a solo artist and as one-half of

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Work That Feels Like Play: What Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog Teaches About Ambition, Burnout, and Fatherhood

1 Comment / Entrepreneurship, Mental Health & Burnout, Work–Life Balance /

Finding work that feels like play is the holy grail of a career. Phil Knight returns to this idea again and again in Shoe Dog. To him, building something meaningful shouldn’t feel like a burden; it should feel alive. When work feels playful, it can feel like bliss. But at the same time, immersion can

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Friday Five — Stake Your Claim, Choose the Path, Do the Work

Friday Five, Newsletter /

Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 312 | December 19, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week Igmar Thomas’ Revive Big Band was founded in 2010 by trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Igmar Thomas. The band has

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How Nike Was Built: Truth-Telling, Shoe Dogs, and Phil Knight’s Calling

1 Comment / Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Leadership /

Phil Knight packs Shoe Dog with leadership and entrepreneurial lessons—most of them learned along the way. The themes I keep coming back to are simple: don’t micromanage, manufacture motivation, obsess over craft, tell the truth, contribute, and find your calling. For Knight, leadership starts with a counterintuitive discipline: don’t tell people how—tell them what, then

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Friday Five — Keep the Rhythm, Consistency Beats Speed, Do Not Stop

Friday Five, Newsletter /

Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 311 | December 12, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to start your weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week James Andrews is from New Orleans, the older brother of Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, and carries

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Michael McHugh
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