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No. 317 | January 30, 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
While most of the U.S. treads through winter, New Orleans is doing the opposite—it gets louder.
Music is the backbone of Carnival, and Big Sam’s Funky Nation captures its spirit better than almost anyone.
Sammie “Big Sam” Williams is a New Orleans trombonist, a former Dirty Dozen Brass Band member, and the gravitational center of Big Sam’s Funky Nation.
The band blends traditional and modern jazz with dance, hard rock, and punk. It’s music designed to move people, not to fill space politely.
Start wth Carnival Thing, Funky Dunky, and Come Down to New Orleans to get a feel for Big Sam’s sound.
Quotes of the Week
The disciple of perception: controlling how you interpret events, directing your actions accordingly, and accepting what you can’t control. These quotes approach that idea from different angles:
“Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” — Epictetus
“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca
Article of the Week
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” — Archimedes
Bernie Eccelstone was obsessed with control. He craved it, along with money, and figured out how to get both by mastering the game he was playing: Formula One.
To gain control, Eccelstone relied on leverage. Monaco, a race with leverage over him, showed him how powerful that tool could be, and he used it relentlessly on everyone else.
Control and leverage only work if you have relationships. Eccelstone understood this and had no issue befriending powerful people to get what he wanted—Vladimir Putin among them.
The lessons from Ecclestone are straightforward, but uncomfortable: understand the game you’re in, use leverage to create outsized outcomes, and build relationships that let you act decisively.
For more on Bernie Eccelstone, Formula One, and what control looks like when it’s actually applied, read the article below:
📝 Bernie Ecclestone Business Lessons: From the Man Who Controlled Formula One
Book of the Week
Instant: The Story of Polaroid tells the story of the company and its founder, Edwin Land.
Polaroid began as a garage start-up in the 1930s and became a billion-dollar company after its breakthrough: the instant camera.
Legendary artists like Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close embraced Polaroid’s cameras, accelerating both its credibility and reach.
Polaroid came crashing down in the late 1990s, undone not by lack of innovation but by mistaking past success for future relevance.
Lessons from Land’s story include:
- Do something interesting all your own
- Create an environment that allows people time to sit and think
- Dream of something worth doing, and simply go do it
- Invent products at the edge of what the market can bear
- Marketing is what you do when your product isn’t good
- Every significant invention must come to a world not prepared for it
For more on Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the dangers of mistaking past success for future security, read the book below:
📚 Instant: The Story of Polaroid
Podcast of the Week
Ben Francis recently joined How I Built This to tell the story of Gymshark.
His story begins with lifting weights and delivering pizza as a teenager. He had no money, no fashion experience, and couldn’t sew.
What he did have was resourcefulness and an early read on a cultural shift. YouTubers were redefining gym culture by building identities and communities online.
When launching Gymshark, Francis didn’t try to compete with Nike. He didn’t buy ads. Instead, he built relationships with YouTubers.
He sent those YouTubers free t-shirts with no strings attached. The goal was simple: create products people actually wanted to wear, clothes that made their effort visible.
Fast forward to today, and Gymshark is a billion-dollar brand. Francis is now the youngest billionaire in the UK. His story is one of brand identity, discipline, and timing.
For more on Ben Francis, Gymshark, and what modern brand-building actually looks like, listen to the episode below:
🎧 Gymshark: Ben Francis, From Pizza Delivery to Billion-Dollar Fitness Brand
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