Things I recommend you buy

Apologies for going off the boil with the notebook, we have recently had our third baby girl, everyone is doing great, but my gosh there is a lot of washing of small peoples clothes to do in our house 🙂

No politics / tech or jobs commentary in this post, just something that might provide some gift inspiration.

This post was inspired by Sam Bowman who is the co-founder of Works in Progress, an online magazine in the pandemic which was acquired by Stripe. We recently got him on Jimmy’s Jobs to discuss why the UK was so sluggish.

Each year Sam writes a piece on the things that he recommends you buy, so I am taking that idea and running with it. 

Things I recommend you buy and use, 2023 edition

For my version, I have tried to categorise them into different ‘buckets’.

• Food & Drink

• Productivity

• Underrated media

• Business Books 

• Clothes

• Running / exercise 

• Podcast gear

I have tried to be open where there are affiliate codes, but deals do change etc and I hope people will be using this resource for a little while. 

First up, the brand that I have recommended more than anyone else this year is Octopus Energy, to declare an interest, The Octopus Group were a very early backer of Jimmy’s Jobs and we would not be where we are without them today. Although we have done nothing commercial with the Energy part of the business - which is now its own separate entity. 

I like Octopus Energy for several reasons. It feels like it has a bit of personality. I like how Greg Jackson himself is a bit of a personality, and I enjoyed his recent appearance on Desert Island Discs.

I would say I **almost** look forward to contacting customer service, I certainly don’t dread it like I do 98% of firms. 

I also find them a lot cheaper and more consistent, now that may be because I now do the monthly meter readings, partly because I enjoy the little ‘spin the wheel’ game which means you can win a bit of money off your bill (despite the fact I am yet to win even a pound!) 

Anyway, you can sign up here for £50 off, and I also get the same.

Food and Drink

Onto the good stuff, the brand that has had more impact on my life than any other in the last two years is Huel. I find it brilliant for breakfast and have it pretty much every day, this sounds very tech-bro, but I quite like having one less decision to make in the morning. 

Yes it does fill you up until lunch, and I find banana and mint choc flavours exceptionally tasty. 

You can get £10 off your first order here. 

Yeo Valley Yoghurt

I don’t understand why we don’t really have a frozen yoghurt market here in the UK, it was probably my favourite thing at Stanford was the canteen serving multiple flavours of frozen yoghurt (class mates and course were good too ;)) 

I have managed to slightly replace it, by freezing Yeo Valley Lemon Curd flavour. 

Wine Society

For wine, we were brought Wine Society membership by Eliza Filby, I could not recommend highly enough. They now do free next day delivery on any bottle, which for a co-op is impressive, clearly works though, it is their 250th anniversary next year. 

Non alcoholic Guinness

Far far better than I ever expected, just hope they manage to get it on draught in pubs soon. 

Coffee 

I was not much of a coffee drinker, then I had kids and now it becomes just behind shelter, water and food in critical essentials. 

I would still hope I am not a coffee snob, but I have found using this stove top can turn even the most standard beans into better than 80% of takeout coffee. 

Productivity

Journaling

I enjoy journaling (my Insta handle is @jimmymcjournal) and have always found writing as a useful way to think and structure and nothing beats pen on paper.

I have long swayed between the Italian, moleskine and the German, Leuchtturm1917, I am now firmly settled on the latter, i prefer the brighter colours and how i can have unruled pages for when I need to chuck down a load of ideas for an interview / comedy sketch.

Flown

When I try to have clear days - I can become easily distracted. Whereas if I have a ‘flock’ on my computer screen, I am far more effective. It creates a bit of social pressure - it is a bit like running in the park, sure I can go for a 5k run on my own, but I don’t half go quicker when I am in a parkrun on a Saturday - positive peer pressure perhaps. 

We are working with Flown to bring in some Jimmy’s Jobs flocks on a Friday afternoon most likely in the New Year - hit reply if you are keen to know more. 

Running / exercise 

For the last 2 years I set myself the target of going under 20mins 22seconds for a 5km. 

In a slightly surreal moment this year I went sub 20mins, big thanks to reader Tonguey who shouted at me so loudly in the final sprint that the Olympics would declared it an illegal run due to wind assistance. 

I use Brooks running shoes, Shokz headphones, and oddly getting some proper running socks made one of the biggest differences, I use 1000 mile socks for day to day and occasionally some compression socks for race days.  For the rest of my gear I tend to use Gymshark stuff 

I don’t actually really use any wearable technology, I would really like to. I tried a whoop band earlier this year but I just found it provided a lot of data and wasn’t really that clear.

I also still run with my phone in my pocket, as still haven’t found a vest or something useful to carry it in. 

Any recommendations on those, please do hit reply and let me know. 

Underrated media

I talk about plenty of these throughout the year, but I do think having great sources of information can be one of the major differences in people's career trajectory. 

Graham Ruddick

- great business newsletter, he launched 18 months ago, has been acquired by Business Leader and will be doing great things in 2024. Watch that space.

Eliza Filby's Newsletter

- brilliant writer on generations, has a book coming on next year on the ‘inhertitocracy’ - it will be brilliant. 

Works in Progress - founded by Sam Bowman who inspired this particular email, interesting thoughts on how to improve the world with an optimistic undertone. 

Joshi Hermann started a one man crusade to save local journalism in the pandemic, by launching the

The Mill

essentially a broadsheet for Manchester, all powered off Substack and newsletters. 

Now quite a few of us are clambering abroad, as a few of us joined as angel investors earlier this year. 

They have expanded to

The Post

for Liverpool

Sheffield Tribune

and just last month they launched the

Birmingham Dispatch

Best business books of 2023

There are a lot of these lists around at the moment, but these were three of my favourites that I got around to reading (although Spotify audiobooks has made a BIG difference to my listening habits) 

Ed Conway, Material World - brilliant dive into the six materials that make up the bedrock of our world, sand, salt, oil and lithium amongst them. He came to record a Jimmy’s Jobs episode which topped out at 90 mins - so we are releasing it as an Xmas special for whilst you are basting the Turkey or preparing the spuds. 

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson - I love biographies this of the 21st Century’s greatest industrialist was brilliant and I had not quite appreciated how many links he had to the UK. 

James Wise, Start Up Century, one of the UKs top VCs has written a book and why we are all more likely to become entrepreneurial in this century, it is really good and he came on the podcast earlier in the year to chat about it, that is available too. We recorded an episode with him here.

Whilst not business books, Danny Finkelstein, Hitler, Stalin and Me is an incredible story from a great writer, was released before the war in the Middle East, but brings that into sharp focus too. And my old boss, Theresa May, Abuse of Power was an insightful read into the challenges of our institutions. For me, it remains one of the great challenges that the West will face in the 21st Century, how do we get more talented people to take jobs in public service?

Clothes

My wife will enjoy me dolling our fashion advice.

Dress2kill for suits and jackets run by the really lovely Sam who had a tough pandemic, but has seen a strong uptick in people wanting to look even better on the 2 or 3 days they might be in the office a week. Chris Robshaw, former England Rugby Captain is an investor. Tell him Jimmy Mc sent you and they’ll be some form of offer, it changes quite frequently though.

House of Bruar found this place for cashmere jumpers last year and now have a mild addiction, partly because they address everything they send to me as ‘Sir Jimmy’

Spoke - buying trousers is hard and boring, Spoke makes it less so. I wear the Hero’s quite a lot and i have started getting shirts from there too. You can get 15% off here.

Podcast / video gear 

This is probably what people actually come most to me for advice on. 

We use Rode Mics, for both static and on the move interviews 

Camera we invested big on this this year, and use a 4k Netflix grade 

We host on Megaphone, use adelicious for sponsorship - although I also recommend buzzsprout for when starting out.

Descript is ace for editing, we have use the enterprise version as we are processing in excess of 15 hours a week, this also forms the bedrock for our social clips editing. 

We have become 4x more productive on hours worked vs content produced in the last year, sometimes people sound sceptical about AI and jobs, but I am seeing how efficient we are becoming on a daily basis.

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The Jimmy’s Jobs team now also produces podcasts and video content for a number of companies, please get in touch if you would like to discuss how we might be able to support you. 

Most corporate content is boring, we try to make that not the case. 

You can see some of the different projects we have worked on in the past, at our partnerships here.

Here was our interview with Sam Bowman who inspired this email from earlier this year: