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 »
“The most important thing [is] trying to find a business with a wide and long-lasting moat around it… protecting a terrific economic castle with an honest lord in charge of the castle.” – Warren Buffett Warren Buffett’s castle-and-moat metaphor captures one of business’s most enduring ideas: build systems that protect themselves. Jeff Bezos did exactly that
Building Moats: How the Amazon Flywheel Reinforces Itself Read More »
Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 306 | November 7, 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 Jean-Philip Grobler is a South African singer and musician who’s the frontman of the band St. Lucia.
Friday Five – Master your mind, Lead yourself, Create your impact Read More »
October was an excellent reading month. I finished five incredible books in my October reading list—all tied together by a single theme: entrepreneurship. The first book was Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike. Phil Knight’s story is a masterclass in grit and vision—how a scrappy shoe startup became one of the most
October Reading List: 5 Best Books I Read in October 2025 Read More »
“I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big.” – Babe Ruth Swing for the Fences Baseball and business share more than competition—they both reward bold swings. In Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos draws a vivid comparison between them and shows how to swing for the fences in business. In baseball, if
Swing for the Fences: Jeff Bezos’s Strategy for Big Bets & Big Wins Read More »
Read or subscribe at michaelwmchugh.com No. 305 | October 31, 2025 Welcome to this week’s Friday Five—a quick dose of insights, inspiration, and favorites to start your weekend with clarity and purpose. Music of the Week Metsa, also known as Metsa Nihue, is known worldwide for his work in Amazonian plant medicine. I first heard
Friday Five – Accept change, Let go of control, Find peace in reality Read More »