Leadership

• May 22, 2026
• The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon Chapter 134 Review: Alive and Running

This chapter pushes the story one step further.

Peter drops into the pile, lies still, and everyone below assumes the worst for one breathless moment. Then he sits up alive. Ben whoops, Dennis cheers, and even panic breaks into joy. Flagg answers with a shriek from above and immediately calls guards to kill Peter and his gang. Lights ignite across the castle and armed feet start pounding toward the plaza. Peter stumbles up, realizes he is unhurt, and snaps the group back to motion. He chooses the West Gate and runs.

• Apr 28, 2026
• Common Sense on Mutual Funds

Bogle on Leadership: Purpose, Patience, and Perseverance

Book: Common Sense on Mutual Funds: Fully Updated 10th Anniversary Edition by John C. Bogle ISBN: 978-0-470-59748-4

Chapter 21 is Bogle at his most philosophical. It’s less about numbers and more about what it means to lead an organization that actually serves its people. And it starts with one goal that tells you everything about the man.

• Jan 22, 2026
• The Eyes of the Dragon

The Eyes of the Dragon Chapter 14 Review: Peter Saves Peony and Earns a Reputation

This chapter pushes the story one step further.

Peter finds Yosef about to kill a horse with a broken leg and orders him to wait for a horse doctor. The doctor says the horse can live but is not economically useful, so he recommends death anyway. Peter insists he will do the hard care himself and keep the horse.

• Aug 16, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA: Closing Thoughts on This Book Retelling Series

Twenty-four posts. Twenty chapters. One book that tries to squeeze a two-year MBA into something you can actually finish. We made it through “The 12-Week MBA” by Nathan Kracklauer and Bjorn Billhardt, and now it is time to step back and ask the big question: was it worth it?

• Aug 09, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 20: Embracing Responsibility Part 2

In Part 1 we watched United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz walk into one of the worst PR disasters in recent airline history. But the real story was not about public relations. It was about what happens when a leader has to pick between competing loyalties, with no right answer in sight.

• Aug 02, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 20: Embracing Responsibility Part 1

A CEO wins “Communicator of the Year,” then tanks his company’s reputation with a single email two weeks later. How does that happen?

• Jul 26, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 19: The Power of Dissent

Everyone on your team says they agree. The meeting ends early. People smile and nod. And then you make a terrible decision. Sound familiar?

• Jul 19, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 18: Deliberating and Executing - From Discussion to Action

Your team just spent two hours discussing three options. Everyone has an opinion. Nobody agrees. Now what? Most teams have no plan for this moment, and that is exactly when things fall apart.

• Jul 12, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 17: Defining the Decision - Getting the Problem Right Before Solving It

Most teams think decision-making is about picking the right option. The authors say the real problem is that teams do not even define what they are deciding in the first place.

• Jul 05, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 16: Collective Action and Decision-Making - How Teams Actually Make Decisions

You and four friends cannot agree on a restaurant. Now imagine trying to make a strategic decision with a team of thousands. That is the problem this chapter tackles, and the answer is not what most people expect.

• Jun 28, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 15: Leadership - What It Really Means Beyond the Buzzwords

Everyone talks about leadership. Books, podcasts, TED talks, LinkedIn posts. But when you ask people what leadership actually is, the answers get vague fast. This chapter might be the most honest take on the subject I have ever read.

• Jun 21, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 14: Engagement and Motivation - What Actually Makes People Care About Their Work

Only 20 percent of workers worldwide actually care about their jobs. That is what Gallup tells us every single year. The other 80 percent are either going through the motions or actively trying to make things worse. Sounds like a crisis. Or does it?

• Jun 14, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 13: Adventures in Feedback - How to Give It Without Destroying Trust

Your manager writes “Fantastic work!” at the top of his email. You feel great for about three seconds. Then you open the attached document and see a bloodbath of red tracked changes. Entire paragraphs crossed out. New text everywhere. Maybe ten of your original words survived. So which is it – fantastic or terrible?

• Jun 07, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 12: Trust and Expectations - The Foundation of Every Working Relationship

You used to play guitar in a band. If you nailed your part, that was on you. Nobody else could do it for you, and nobody else could take that away. Then you became a manager. And suddenly your success depended entirely on what other people did. Welcome to the most jarring transition in any career.

• May 31, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 11: Joy and Frustration - The Human Side of Management

Everything we covered so far in this book was about numbers. Profit, growth, risk, cash flow, cost structures, valuation. Important stuff. But here is the thing: none of it works without people. And people are messy.

• May 24, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 10: Creating Value - How Every Manager Connects to the Big Picture

Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “Honey, today was a win. We created a million dollars of value by nudging the cost of capital down by 0.005 percent!” But somehow, every single manager in every company is connected to value creation. Chapter 10 explains how.

• May 17, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 9: Valuation Foundations - What Is a Company Actually Worth?

On April 19, 2022, Netflix told the world it lost 200,000 subscribers. The stock dropped by a third in one day. Fifty billion dollars of shareholder value just vanished. But how do you even put a price tag on a company in the first place?

• May 10, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 8: Cost Structures - Fixed vs Variable and Why It Matters

“Sure, we are losing money on every unit we sell. But we will make it up in volume!” That famous line is sometimes a joke about startup founders. And sometimes it is a real business strategy. How do you know which one you are dealing with?

• May 03, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 7: Cash Flow and Working Capital Part 2 - Managing the Cash Gap

Your company is profitable on paper but bleeding cash in real life. How does that happen? And more importantly, how do you fix it?

• Apr 26, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 7: Cash Flow and Working Capital Part 1 - Why Growing Companies Go Broke

What if I told you that the fastest way for a profitable company to go bankrupt is to grow really fast? Sounds backwards, right? That is exactly what this chapter is about.

• Apr 19, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 6: Cash Flow Basics - Profit Is Not Cash

Here is a sentence that will surprise exactly nobody who has ever checked their bank account after payday: just because you earned money does not mean you have money. Companies work the same way.

• Apr 12, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 5: The Balance Sheet Part 2 - Reading Between the Lines

Your food truck is doing great. Cash is piling up, debt is going down, and customers love your grilled cheese. Time to expand. But expansion changes everything on the balance sheet, and not always in ways that feel comfortable. This is post 7 in my 12-Week MBA retelling series.

• Apr 05, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 5: The Balance Sheet Part 1 - What a Company Owns and Owes

Here is a question that sounds simple but trips up most people: how do you know if a company with $175 billion in debt is in trouble? The answer might surprise you. This is post 6 in my 12-Week MBA retelling series.

• Mar 29, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 4: Risk - Why Predictability Is Worth More Than Growth

Here is something that surprised me in this book. You can actually create value without making a single extra dollar. How? By making your business more predictable. Chapter 4 explains why, and it changed how I think about risk.

• Mar 22, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 3: Growth - How Businesses Get Bigger

Everyone wants their business to grow. But what does growth actually mean, and where does it come from? Chapter 3 of The 12-Week MBA breaks this down in a way that makes you rethink everything.

• Mar 15, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 2: Profitability - How Companies Actually Make Money

The concept of profit was once considered important enough that two superpowers pointed nuclear weapons at each other over it. The Cold War was basically an argument about whether the profit motive should organize our economy. You would think something that serious would be simple to define. It is not.

• Mar 08, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA Chapter 1: What Is Value and Why Should You Care?

If someone asked you “what is the purpose of a company?” what would you say? Most people go straight to “making money.” And that is not wrong. But it is not the full picture either.

• Mar 01, 2025
• The 12-Week MBA

The 12-Week MBA: A Book Retelling Series on Business Essentials

Do you really need to spend two years and six figures on an MBA to be good at business? According to Nathan Kracklauer and Bjorn Billhardt, the answer is no. And they wrote a book to prove it.