Legendary Nike founder Phil Knight has a simple mantra in Shoe Dog: just don’t stop. You’ll want to quit—everyone does—but you can’t let the urge win. The book circles a handful of themes: doubt, momentum, growth versus safety, fear of failure, and stubborn refusal to lose. Long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine captured it perfectly: “Somebody may […]
Just Don’t Stop: What Nike’s Phil Knight Learned About Winning Read More »
Read or subscribe to the Friday Five at michaelwmchugh.com No. 310 | December 5, 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 Sherry Finzer is a musician who leans into healing and calm as the core of
Friday Five — Be Stingy With Time, Guard What Matters, Choose With Intent Read More »
Mastering the fundamentals is preached throughout the sports world. It’s also a theme, along with the phrase, “honing the sword,” that anyone working under Nvidia’s Jensen Huang often hears. Jensen is obsessed with fundamentals and has a clarity of thinking that’s second to none. Add in his willingness to have healthy conflict, and you get
Honing the Sword: Jensen Huang on Conflict, Clear Thinking, and Fundamentals Read More »
Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 309 | November 28, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to help you start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week The Lost Bayou Ramblers, hailing from Lafayette, Louisiana, perform Cajun music throughout the world. Louis Michot (fiddle,
Friday Five — Balance the Books, Clear the Mind, End the Day Clean Read More »
Nvidia’s operating system comes directly from its founder, Jensen Huang. His approach is simple but demanding: hire people smarter than you, move fast, and work with the intensity that compounds over time. The Nvidia Way shows how these principles shaped not just the company, but the pace at which it operates. “I owe whatever success
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Execution Strategy: Hire People Smarter Than You Read More »
Read or subscribe to the Friday Five at michaelwmchugh.com No. 308 | November 21, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to help you start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week Branford Marsalis is a saxophonist, composer, and head of the jazz band the
Friday Five — Let go of control, Release expectations, Live with freedom Read More »
Complacency kills companies. It’s why legendary coach Nick Saban preached against it for decades. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang felt the same way. He knew avoiding complacency would keep Nvidia alive. One way Jensen fought complacency was by building resilience. He believed resilience mattered more than intelligence. Another driver of success, in Jensen’s view, is using pain
Avoiding Complacency: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang on Resilience and Future-Proofing Read More »
Some leaders avoid criticism. Jeff Bezos treated it like a mirror—leadership lessons to be learned at every turn. Ernest Holmes once wrote, “Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.” Bezos believed that idea at scale—experiment boldly, fail intelligently, obsess over customers, and be willing to change
Leadership Lessons: Jeff Bezos on Change When Critics Are Right Read More »
Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 307 | November 14, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a short dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to help you start the weekend with clarity and focus. Music of the Week Takuya Nakamura, originally from Japan, moved to the U.S. in the early 1990s to study under legendary
Friday Five – Be tolerant with others, Hold yourself higher, Change yourself first Read More »
It’s Always Day One.” – Jeff Bezos Make it Cost Less Jeff Bezos built Amazon on a simple discipline: obsess over the customer. That obsession revealed itself most clearly in Amazon’s fixation on lowering costs—a cornerstone of the Day One mindset. “It’s always better to have lower costs,” Bezos said in Amazon Unbound—a line that could
Day One Mindset: Jeff Bezos on Keeping Your Company Alive Read More »