No. 345 | August 14, 2026
Welcome to Friday Five, a short collection of ideas to take into your weekend.
This week’s themes: exploration, continuous improvement, small wins, being different, and saying no.
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Music of the Week
“Life would be pretty boring if I didn’t explore.” — Trombone Shorty
That spirit is all over the New Orleans music scene.
New Breed Brass Band made its street debut in November 2013. Led by snare drummer Jenard Andrews, the band grew out of the city’s second-line tradition and developed its own blend of brass, funk, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and Caribbean grooves.
The result sounds unmistakably New Orleans without sounding like a copy of anyone else.
Start with “Line Em Up,” “Good Time,” and “6th Ward” from Second Line Sunday, the band’s 2025 collaboration with Trombone Shorty.
🎵 New Breed Brass Band – Second Line Sunday
Quotes of the Week
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”— Calvin Coolidge
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”— Vincent van Gogh
“Step by step. I can’t think of any other way of accomplishing anything.”— Michael Jordan
Article of the Week
“To succeed, you must string together many small incremental advances rather than count on hitting the lottery jackpot once.” — Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg’s answer to success is surprisingly simple: keep moving.
In Bloomberg by Bloomberg, he describes success as a series of small opportunities and incremental advances rather than one giant stroke of luck.
His advice is practical: improve your skills, take chances, make tactical plans for the next few steps, see what happens, and adjust your next move.
The same pattern shows up elsewhere.
Southwest Airlines began with a simple idea: connect Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio with low-fare, short-haul service. Rollin King famously sketched the Texas Triangle on a cocktail napkin while discussing the idea with lawyer Herb Kelleher.
The napkin became part of Southwest’s founding mythology. The point wasn’t the napkin. It was the idea.
Netscape offers the other side of the lesson.
The company became a dominant force in web browsers. Netscape’s Navigator had more than 80% of browser usage in early 1996. But Microsoft changed the competitive landscape by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. By 1998, Internet Explorer had overtaken Navigator in browser usage. AOL acquired Netscape later that year.
The lesson isn’t simply to move fast.
It’s to keep moving, keep learning, and know when the world around you has changed.
For more on these companies and what Bloomberg gets right about building success, read:
📝 How to Achieve Success: What Michael Bloomberg Gets Right About Small Wins
Podcast of the Week
“I dared to be different. I want to inspire others to do the same.” — Susie Wolff
Susie Wolff is a former professional racing driver and the managing director of F1 Academy.
She joined Armchair Expert to discuss growing up motorsport-obsessed in Scotland, her grandfather’s career as a motocross rider, discovering karting, and what it was like being the only girl on the track.
She also talks about racing against Lewis Hamilton as a child, the physical demands of racing, and building F1 Academy, which aims to develop and prepare young female drivers to progress to higher levels of competition.
What makes the conversation interesting isn’t just racing.
It’s what happens when you enter a field where you don’t look like everyone else and decide that being different isn’t a disadvantage.
It’s an advantage you can build on.
For more on Wolff, growing up in Scotland, and finding her way into motorsport, listen:
🎙️ Susie Wolff (Managing Director of F1 Academy)
Book of the Week
“If it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.” — Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers didn’t set out to build a big company.
He started CD Baby because he wanted to sell his own music online. Then other musicians asked if he could sell theirs.
He said yes.
That small decision eventually became CD Baby, which grew into one of the largest online sellers of independent music. Sivers sold the company in 2008 for $22 million and put the proceeds into a charitable trust for music education.
In Anything You Want, he shares lessons and mistakes from building the business.
The ideas are simple, but difficult to practice:
- Build a company that reflects what you want rather than what other people expect.
- Treat your business as a creative outlet.
- If you’re happy, your customers are happy, and you’re profitable, that may be enough.
- If an opportunity isn’t a “hell yes,” turn it down.
- Constraints can force you to focus on creating value rather than chasing external validation.
- Obsess over your customers and make their lives easier.
- Build a business that gives you freedom rather than one that owns you.
Sivers’s story is a useful reminder that more isn’t always better.
To go deeper on Sivers, his entrepreneurial journey, and decision-making, read:
📚 Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
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