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No. 320 | February 20, 2026
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
Galactic is a New Orleans funk band formed in the mid-1990s, anchored by Robert Mercurio, Stanton Moore, Ben Ellman, and Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph.
They blend jazz, funk, jam band, and R&B into something that feels like August in New Orleans. Catch them at their unofficial home, Tipitina’s.
Start with Into the Deep, Church, and Cineramascope.
Quotes of the Week
Cut the strings. Remove the noise. Ignore what pulls you off course. These say it better:
“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life—think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.” — Swami Vivekananda
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” — Alexander Graham Bell
“Focusing is about saying no.” — Steve Jobs
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee
“Until my ONE thing is done, everything else is a distraction.” — Gary Keller
“An addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production.”— Robin Sharma
Article of the Week
“Trouble results when the speed of growth exceeds the speed of nurturing human resources. To use the analogy of growth rings in a tree, when unusually rapid growth caused the rings to grow abnormally thick, the tree trunk weakens and is easily broken.” — Akio Toyoda
During the Great Financial Crisis, Starbucks was in real trouble. It closed stores it had just opened. Customers stopped buying. Costs soared. The company began to unravel.
Howard Schultz had let the brand drift into CDs, bloated menus, and distractions. Somewhere along the way, Starbucks forgot what it did best: serve a great cup of coffee.
Worse, leadership stopped listening. Hubris crept in. They assumed past success would carry them forward.
Growth outpaced discipline. They assumed they could just show up and win. They couldn’t. Customers walked. The brand eroded.
The lesson: stay true to your core, guard against complacency, and never grow faster than you can manage.
For more on Starbucks and how Howard Schultz turned the ship around, read:
📝 Starbucks Turnaround: How Howard Schultz Saved the Brand
Book of the Week
Jim Clayton is a true rags-to-riches story. First a Dreamopens with a simple truth: hard work and perseverance still matter.
His story offers business lessons any entrepreneur can apply:
- Self-discipline compounds over decades.
- Trade short-term comfort for long-term gain.
- Find underserved markets and own them.
- Cash is king. Guard it obsessively.
- Hire carefully. Fire decisively.
- Grow rapidly but responsibly.
- Differentiate or be average.
- There is no “there.” The journey never ends.
For more on Clayton and his business lessons, read:
Podcast of the Week
Marc Andreessen joined Mark Halperin on The a16z Show to show how he actually uses AI.
They break down how a bakery should use AI, how to turn ChatGPT into your personal board of directors, and Andreessen’s favorite prompt: “What questions should I be asking?”
If you want to use AI more intelligently, start here:
🎧 How Marc Andreessen Actually Uses AI
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