No. 339 | July 3, 2026
Welcome to Friday Five, a short collection of ideas to take into your weekend.
This week’s theme: making great art, taking action, having a plan, dreaming big, and staying persistent.
If this resonates, forward it to a friend. Most readers discover Friday Five because someone they trust shared it with them.
Music of the Week
“To make good art and to make good music, you have to be vulnerable. You have to really hit a nerve.” — Paul Janeway
St. Paul and the Broken Bones is an eight-piece band from Birmingham, Alabama, led by frontman Paul Janeway.
The group emerged in the early 2010s, and after seeing them live, I can say few singers command a room the way Janeway does.
Start with “Call Me,” “Flow With It,” and “Apollo.”
🎵 St. Paul and the Broken Bones
Quotes of the Week
Understanding your role in life, taking action, and serving others. That’s the theme captured in this week’s quotes:
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. — Steve Jobs
“In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action. — Tony Robbins
“Success seems to be connected to action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit. — Conrad Hilton
“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. — Zig Ziglar
Article of the Week
Every university seems to reassure you that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well. That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly at something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future. — Peter Thiel
Having an imperfect plan beats having no plan at all. Fred Smith learned that while building FedEx. He believed the future belonged to people willing to create it rather than wait for it.
Fred Smith bet everything on FedEx. Steve Jobs did the same with Apple. Neither approached a career the way an investor builds a portfolio. They concentrated on one idea they believed would still matter years from now.
Jobs surrounded himself with extraordinary people at both Apple and Pixar. Great ideas matter, but great teams usually turn those ideas into enduring companies.
Plans rarely unfold exactly as expected. But having no plan almost guarantees you’ll drift. Smith and Jobs weren’t betting on certainty. They were betting that the work they understood best would become even more valuable over time.
For more on having a plan, focusing your efforts, and building great teams, read:
📝 How Great Entrepreneurs Focus on What Matters: Peter Thiel’s Best Business Strategy from Zero to One
Podcast of the Week
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” — Walt Disney
Walt Disney turned his company into a moonshot factory, taking one ambitious risk after another.
Walt bet the company on films like Snow White while quietly building a business flywheel decades before Jeff Bezos made the concept famous.
Disney’s story blends creativity, risk-taking, business innovation, and relentless ambition. It’s one of the greatest entrepreneurial stories ever told.
For more on Walt Disney, the entertainment giant he built, and how the company survived the early days, listen:
Book of the Week
“Work with the smartest people you can, hopefully smarter than you. Be persistent, don’t give up easily.” — Jim Simons
Since the late 1980s, Jim Simons’ Medallion fund has averaged annual returns of 66 percent, translating to profits of more than $100 billion.
The Man Who Solved the Market is the story of how Simons created the fund and investing powerhouse Renaissance Technologies.
It’s the story of how a world-class mathematician and former code breaker mastered the market using a data-driven, algorithmic approach.
Lessons that stuck with me include:
- Look for patterns, not reasons.
- Share information openly so the entire team can improve.
- Reward people based on team performance rather than individual performance.
- Constantly update your thinking because competitors will replicate your strategies.
For more on looking for patterns, collaborating, and rewarding performance, read:
📚 The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
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