Huel / Olio / Airbnb / Baby News
This weeks Notebook
👚 Huel - can it become a clothing company?
🏠 Airbnb - hybrid future of work
🍼 Baby News
🌍 Earth Day - Tessa Clarke and Olio
🥣 Appearing on Cereal Entrepreneur
📚. Creator corner - Book Review: Olive by Emma Gannon
Welcome to the 15 new subscribers since our last edition. If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and somewhat occasionally politics.
Huel - becoming a clothing company?
The Holy Grail / North Star of marketers and branding people is to get their customers to become evangelical about them and therefore making their original job redundant. Think of Apple, Tesla, Nike - owning the product in its own right becomes a status symbol - of course such viral levels cannot be achieved without a phenomenal product first.
My wife decided to buy some Huel whilst working in the NHS during the pandemic. It was a practical decision based purchase, no time for leisurely lunches, she wanted something quick and healthy.
I’m open to trying most things in life, but I freely admit I was sceptical about Huel, could powder really fill me up? Would it taste any good?
Since the first day I tried it, barely a day goes by where I don’t have it. It was like a Damascus style moment.
I genuinely get excited about new flavours, and trying new products such as their hot and savoury lunch type meals.
So, I was surprised when they have announced they’ll be moving into clothing with the purpose of aiming to ‘slow the fashion cycle’. Founder Julian Hearn said,
‘We’re an ethically minded business and we want to do better…All we’re looking to do right now is create something that creates 100 true fans …
Then hopefully they love Huelwear enough to tell their friends, and we reach more people.’
That has certainly worked on the drinks front and the story is different from the stereotypical food-tech start up. They are based in Hertfordshire and the founder is 50. Older founders are more common than we give credit for.
It is also rumoured to be thinking of an IPO in the next couple of years, and of course it counts Steven Bartlett of Dragons Den fame amongst its backers.
So as a self confessed ‘superfan’, I am in two minds about clothing expansion, great they are potentially diversifying and innovating, but at the same time will it slow their innovation in the product that I care most about?
But if Elon Musk, can run a space company, an electric carmaker and a social media platform, I am sure Julian Hearn can have a good crack at clothing.
Personally I am a Mint Chocolate and Banana man, you can get £10 off if you type Jimmy McLoughlin when you first purchase Their website is here.
🏠 Airbnb - future of work …
Westminster has got itself into a terrible tangle at the moment over whether civil servants should be in the office or working remotely.
Nadine Dorries has labelled Jacob Rees-Mogg Dickensian over the issue.
It is unclear whether JRM has considered this an insult or a compliment.
It is almost becoming a culture war level issue, and genuinely has the potential to become one of the dividing lines in our society over the next ten years.
We will return to the specific issue in a future notebook, you can subscribe here.
However, I wanted to flag this great thread from AirBnB founder, Brian Chesky, which talks about the way they’ll be approaching work, and FWIW I think it is the best balance of policy I have seen as of yet (click to expand the full thread)
🍼 🍼 Baby News
Our daughter arrived safely and soundly at the end of last week, mother and baby are doing really well, emails may become shorter in coming weeks :)
I wrote a few words on LinkedIn about approach to paternity leave
🌍 🌍 Tessa Clarke, Olio celebrating Earth Day
One of the challenges of building a podcast audience, is it is a bit like building a well, and it starts going very deep when you have over 50 hours of content … very useful if you know it is there, but if you don’t, how can you discover it!?
Interestingly, despite not releasing an episode in April, it will still be our 5th best month on record for overall downloads as more people discover the podcast and compounding takes effect.
We are also experimenting with remixing some of our content for ‘The YouTube …’ as it has a much more powerful recommendation engine than any of the other podcast platforms.
Therefore we are testing out some different visuals for the opening two/three minutes and seeing how much a difference they make.
So with Earth Day being last Friday, we remixed one of our all time favourite episodes with Tessa Clarke from Olio - as always we would love to know what you think and how we can improve them - just hit reply to this email or hello@jobsofthefuture.co
Book Review: Emma Gannon - Olive
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure when I picked up Emma’s debut novel, Olive, whether it was going to be for me, it is about a friendship group of four millenial women and the challenges they face about the societal pressure of starting a family.
It charts a lot of those young adulthood events, internships, first grad jobs, first break ups, hen-dos, weddings, baby showers, and that ultimate millenial Londoner conversation … moving away from the capital.
Olive is set in London throughout the 2010s, so I found it an enjoyable nostalgic trip, and also thought provoking seeing these life events through female eyes and having ten years of my own experience made me reflect on them (why do break ups always happen in a coffee shops - possibly one of the most public places you can think of)
Although perhaps, my biggest reflection, was it was the first time I had read a novel, where I had a good knowledge of the author’s voice and works beforehand. Emma is the creator of something called the multi-hyphen method, the idea that we are all developing many strings to our bow and life is not about one singular career.
That gave the book a deeper and more complex feel than I had been anticipating and it did make me think, that we’ll inevitably have more author’s and novellists come from the creator world first.
Her book, Olive is available to buy through her website here.
Emma is also a podcaster (casual two million downloads last year) and an author and a substacker!
🥣 Cereal Entrepreneur
There are a lot of podcasts out there particularly about start-ups, people think podcasting is a simple formula, I am interesting person and I know interesting people = interesting podcast!
How I wish it were that simple, this is where the cereal entrepreneur from Startups Magazine has a clever tactic, it is a pun, too often underused in the modern world, but the clever thing is the opening question instantly makes you feel more at ease and means a much more open conversation.
Was fun to be answering the questions put to me by Anna Flockett.
And yes Huel is my cereal of choice …
End of the Notebook …
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Until next time!