Community is the Whole Business Model | Wez Saunders, Defected Records

Community is the Whole Business Model | Wez Saunders, Defected Records

Summary A cold email, a chest-infection phone call, a buyout, and 951 sold-out shows since 2021. The CEO of Defected Records on what holds the centre. Episode Overview Wez Saunders cold-emailed Simon Dunmore in 2013. Two days after a meeting in which Dunmore said he could sell a pen, Wez was home with a chest infection when Dunmore called. He took the club promotions job. Four years later he ran Defected. In an hour with James Kirkham, Wez traces the line from a dropped Sony Walkman tuned to Kiss FM, through twelve years on the fast track at Deutsche Bank, to the summer of 2008 when his brother was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 23 days. He explains the £265 first quarterly paycheck from his first label that forced him to build an ecosystem rather than one imprint. He walks through the management buyout that made him chairman as well as CEO, the ninety-page manifesto he wrote for staff, and the pendulum metaphor he uses to keep house music's centre still while its edges swing. Then come the numbers: since 2021, Defected has put on 1,033 events outside Ibiza and 951 of them have sold out, against a live scene squeezed by inflation, war in Ukraine, and venue closures. He covers the fifty-plus-show virtual festival run during COVID that reached tens of millions, why a market that has gone from 100,000 songs a day to 140,000 makes brand and provenance matter more not less, and why bands like Jamie Webster and The Lathums may be the early signal of an AI-era backlash. The through-line he keeps coming back to is one word: community. Chapters (00:00) Cold open and intro (01:30) Tell me a story: Kiss FM, decks at fourteen, blagging gigs (05:30) Married at 22, Deutsche Bank, brother dies in 23 days (07:00) Endemic Digital, £265 and an ecosystem of labels\ (09:30) Cold email to Simon Dunmore: sell me this pen (11:30) The phone call in bed: club promotions to MD (14:30) COVID and the virtual festival born on a Sunday WhatsApp (17:30) The management buyout: from licensee to CEO and chairman (22:30) Cola, streaming and why Defected stopped licensing out (27:30) 1,033 events, 951 sold out, the squeezed live scene (35:00) The ninety-page manifesto and the pendulum (38:30) AI, 140,000 songs a day and a bands renaissance "Since 2021 we've put on 1,033 events that are not Ibiza. 951 of them have sold out." — Wes Saunders About the guest Wez Saunders is the CEO and chairman of Defected Records, the independent dance label founded by Simon Dunmore in 1999. He spent twelve years in finance, joining Bankers Trust in 1999 and rising on a fast track at Deutsche Bank, before leaving on his thirtieth birthday to acquire Endemic Digital and re-enter music. He joined Defected in 2014 as club promotions manager after cold-emailing Simon Dunmore, became managing director within four years, led the company through COVID with a fifty-plus-show virtual festival run that reached tens of millions, and led the management buyout that made him chairman as well as CEO. Defected and its sister brand Glitterbox have put on 1,033 events outside Ibiza since 2021, of which 951 sold out, and now move roughly a million tickets a year. Listen elsewhereApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413]YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast]Website: https://www.storyco.site [https://www.storyco.site]Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guest: Wez Saunders Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

Ted Talk From The Toilet | Ryan Hopkins

Ryan Hopkins filmed his first TEDx talk from a toilet cubicle, ran a hundred episodes of Toilet Break Wellbeing on LinkedIn and turned the script into an Amazon No. 1 business book. Three years before any of that he was a former rugby player with a broken leg, an eating disorder, and a Halifax bank clerk who found himself unable to speak across the counter. In an hour with James Kirkham, Ryan draws the line the wellness industry refuses to draw: wellness is a $9.2 trillion industry trying to sell you a hot stone massage; wellbeing is your subjective satisfaction with your life, and the two are not the same thing. He explains why an Oxford Wellbeing Research review found that eleven of thirteen workplace wellbeing interventions worsened wellbeing in the short term, and why a stress-management webinar inside a 49-hour week shines a light on the problem and does nothing to fix it. He covers his rugby injury and the bulimia that followed, the one-way flight to Argentina with £600 from a sold Vauxhall Tigra, the Ecuadorian hostel he helped build on the side of a mountain, the wildcard slot onto the Deloitte grad scheme, the LinkedIn show Toilet Break Wellbeing that ran a hundred episodes and became 52 Weeks of Wellbeing, the Wetherspoons table in Putney (212, by the water) where the book got written, the fintech where he cut five hours a week off the average work week and saved 2.4 million hours, the NatWest project with JAAQ that correlates with a 6.9% drop in mental health absence, why bricklayers are the best meditators in the world, what 'orthosomnia' is doing to your sleep, and Rory Sutherland's argument that an office needs a library space and a pub space and nothing else. He ends on the call he used to make to his nan every day at 12:15. Chapters (00:00) Cold open and intro (02:00) Tell me a story: the book that started on a toilet (06:30) Rugby, debt and a one-way ticket to Argentina (09:30) Bulimia, a Halifax bank counter and the call to mum (12:30) Oxford Brookes, the Deloitte wildcard and the work (16:00) Wellbeing is the output of good work, not an event (19:00) Wellness vs wellbeing: the $9.2 trillion confusion (23:00) Why bricklayers are the best meditators in the world (24:30) Sleep apps, orthosomnia and the wellness paradox (27:30) Healthi: putting a number on the value of looking after people (36:00) Calling Nan at 12:15 (38:00) Library space and pub space: what work looks like after the laptop "Everything I do is to help people not end up where I did, and if they do, to know they're not alone." — Ryan Hopkins About the guest Ryan Hopkins is a workplace wellbeing specialist, a TEDx Shoreditch speaker, and the Amazon No. 1 bestselling author of 52 Weeks of Wellbeing (Kogan Page). He started his working life as a trainee electrician, came back through Oxford Brookes after a year travelling through South America, joined Deloitte as a wildcard grad, led wellbeing at Sainsbury's Tech, and returned to Deloitte to build out its wellbeing consultancy with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He is now the founder of Healthi, a corporate health platform that quantifies the impact of an organisation's healthcare spend, with pilots launching in the UK, UAE and US. Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast] Website: https://www.storyco.site [https://www.storyco.site] Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guest: Ryan Hopkins Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

The Bald Yorkshireman in the Bath | Joe Fattorini & Mel Jappy | StoryCo

Joe Fattorini sat in a bath of red wine in the Atacama Desert, filmed himself talking to camera and uploaded the clip to YouTube. Years later the producer Mel Jappy found it, four-by-three and badly cropped, and built The Wine Show around him. In an hour with James Kirkham, Joe and Mel walk through how a show ostensibly about wine ended up in 110 countries and in front of hundreds of millions of viewers by refusing to be about wine. The first rule Mel set Joe: never talk about anything you cannot taste in the glass. The second, when pitching: three sentences only — a question, two numbers, a visual image. They cover the Argentina episode about Malbec they were filming the day the Trump administration announced its Muslim ban, and the producer who burst into tears on a vineyard wall; the Georgian supra, a dinner whose name means tablecloth because the food is meant to hide the cloth; the Moldova shoot where a Red Army parade gatecrashed a piece to camera and a bear of a man told the crew, on the lens, to be quiet; Hermann Göring's wine collection in a Chișinău cellar; Howard Gossage's 1962 Paul Masson ad copy ("cheaper than cars, quieter than hi-fis, tastier than stamps") that Joe still considers the best wine ad ever written; The Picnic Society's 1801 rule of six bottles a head; and the 1791 Vin de Constance, dropped in Constantia and sieved before it reached the glass, that Napoleon drank on Saint Helena in the year Mozart died. Chapters(00:00) Cold open and intro (01:30) Tell me a story: a bath of red wine in the Atacama (05:00) Pitching a show that should not work( 08:00) Finding Joe at the bottom of a YouTube recommendation column (14:00) Cheese, not snobbery: why most people think they don't know wine (19:00) Ego in a box and the wrong-size trousers (24:00) The drunken monkey, the pheasant slippers and the show's real fans (30:00) Evergreen by design: would you make it the same today (32:00) Argentina, Georgia, Moldova — the day the show wasn't the show (44:00) Three sentences to pitch: the producer's rules that travel (53:00) The 1791 Vin de Constance: Napoleon's wine, Mozart's year "The wine show is not about wine. It's about great stories." — Mel Jappy About the guests Mel Jappy is a BAFTA-nominated executive producer with nine years at the BBC and credits including Who Do You Think You Are? and Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection. She trained as a solicitor, came into television as a MasterChef contestant, and created and produced The Wine Show. Joe Fattorini is a philosophy graduate, was wine correspondent for The Herald for fourteen years, an International Wine Challenge Personality of the Year, and the presenter The Guardian once called "the Attenborough of Oddbins." Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413]YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast] Website: https://www.storyco.site [https://www.storyco.site]Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guests: Joe Fattorini and Mel Jappy Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

The Headhunter Turned Therapist | Kathleen Saxton

Kathleen Saxton was repossessed out of her family home at 11. By 40 she was running C-suite headhunting at The Lighthouse Company. She trained as a psychotherapist along the way and now argues boards have governance for cash, finance and risk, and none at all for behaviour. In an hour with James Kirkham she walks through the memoir she wrote on domestic abuse and the lawyer she hired to defend it; the flute teacher Norman Blow who took her on after she got a clean note out of the mouthpiece on her second try; the safe-cracking interview method she used to read C-suite candidates at Lighthouse; the candidate's story that pushed her to enrol at Regent's University; what private equity buyers and founders are actually doing to each other after the deal closes; "human remains" wellbeing post-COVID, and the executive whose chair refused him half an hour off a board to dial into a friend's funeral; AI as triage versus AI as treatment; what covert narcissism actually looks like, the dark tetrad, and the moment her ex-fiancé asked if she was wearing that to the wedding; lobbying the BACP and UKCP to add narcissism as a search specialism; the difference between what UK and US guests will say on tape; and the Felix Dennis answer she keeps thinking about. Chapters : (00:00) Cold open and intro (01:30) The memoir her lawyer warned her not to publish (03:30) Repossessed at 11: shame, sofas and two gerbils (07:30) Sweet tooth and 'don't be a Coca-Cola bottle' (10:30) Cracking the safe: how she read C-suite candidates (14:00) The interview that sent her to train as a therapist (21:00) Founders, private equity and the wellbeing mask (25:30) AI in therapy and in the boardroom (30:30) No governance for behaviour (33:00) Narcissism: grandiose, covert and the dark tetrad (39:30) Writing the book and training other therapists (47:30) What's next: live radio, a documentary, accessibility "I can't bear the thought that someone can't be helped." — Kathleen Saxton Mentioned in this episode * My Parent the Peacock — Kathleen Saxton (book, on narcissistic parents) * Endless — Kathleen Saxton (forthcoming memoir) * DSM-5 — American Psychiatric Association (the diagnostic manual Kathleen references on cluster B and the nine narcissism traits) * Billions — Showtime (the Wendy character as house psychologist) * Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over — BBC (cited as the format Kathleen would borrow for a narcissism documentary) * This Morning — ITV (Kathleen's regular phone-in slot) * The Lighthouse Company — C-suite executive search firm Kathleen founded * Psyched Ventures — Kathleen's clinical-psychology-into-business venture * Sky, Global, Omnicom — Kathleen's prior media and advertising posts * Regent's University, London — where she trained as a psychotherapist * The Priory — psychiatric placement during training * BACP and UKCP — UK psychotherapy accrediting bodies; Kathleen successfully lobbied for narcissism as a search specialism * Felix Dennis — publisher; the "I forgot to get married" anecdote * Bruce Daisley — interviewer in the Dennis story * Matt Shetna — co-founder with Kathleen of Advertising Week Europe * Ronnie Scott's, London — venue of the Dennis interview * Cambridge Analytica — referenced via the whistleblower lawyer Kathleen hired About Kathleen Saxton Kathleen Saxton spent three decades at Sky, Global and Omnicom and founded the C-suite headhunters The Lighthouse Company. She is a qualified psychotherapist with rooms in London and New York and a co-founder of Psyched Ventures. My Parent the Peacock hit Amazon category number one. Endless is forthcoming. Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 [https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast] Website: https://www.storyco.site [https://www.storyco.site] Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham Guest: Kathleen Saxton Producer: Jago Lee Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt Editor: Ryan O'Meera Music: Doubt Point Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London

The Science Behind Every Story Ever Told | Will Storr | StoryCo Ep6

Will Storr has spent thirty years working out what a story actually is. He sits down with James for the longest, most personal version he has given of how that obsession started — and what it has cost him to get good at it. It starts with six words. A tiger. A hunter. A tiger. Will calls this an ancient Bengali story, and inside ninety seconds it has done more to explain how stories work than most books on the subject. From there he tracks his own arc against the architecture he has spent four books describing — Selfie, The Status Game, The Science of Storytelling, A Story Is a Deal. The Catholic-comp kid who failed every A-level and started a school magazine called The Groover. The phone call from Loaded where, as he puts it, you were judged on how good your first sentence was. The Oxford open day where an English tutor asked his favourite Tennessee Williams and he wondered, briefly, if it might be a brand of crisps. The great-great-uncle, Samuel Smiles, who in the mid-1800s wrote the book that named the self-help genre. The thesis of A Story Is a Deal: the most persuasive stories say I see you. I know you. I know how to get you from there up to there. And the question James eventually puts to him — would the boy who pinned a newspaper column to his bedroom wall have had any idea this was coming? Not a chance. Chapters (00:00) A tiger, a hunter, a tiger (02:00) The Catholic comp, The Groover, and the local fanzine (05:00) Inside Loaded: judged on your first sentence (10:00) What AI might give back to long-form (14:00) A Story Is a Deal: hero, connection, status (16:00) Apple, Sport Club Recife, and the architecture of persuasion (22:00) The Status Game: virtue as the second route (24:00) "What's your favourite Tennessee Williams?" (27:00) Donkins, Smiles, and the comp boy at Cambridge (36:00) Forget Scott Galloway: get good at something (39:00) The best of masculinity (48:00) The method, the jewels, The Five Obstructions "I see you. I know you. And I know how to get you from there up to there." — Will Storr Mentioned in this episode - Will Storr, A Story Is a Deal - Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling - Will Storr, The Status Game - Will Storr, Selfie - Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism - Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1850s) - George Loewenstein on the psychology of curiosity - Apple, "Here's to the Crazy Ones" - Sport Club Recife organ donation campaign - Lars von Trier, The Five Obstructions (2003) - Jørgen Leth, The Perfect Human (1967) - John Gray, Straw Dogs About the guest Will Storr is a journalist and author whose books — Selfie, The Status Game, The Science of Storytelling, and most recently A Story Is a Deal — have made him one of the most forensic chroniclers of how identity, status and narrative actually work. He came up at Loaded in the late 1990s, trained in the Tom Wolfe school of long-form, and treats the architecture of a story the way an engineer treats a bridge. Listen elsewhere Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast Website: https://www.storyco.site Follow: @StoryCoPodcast Credits Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Will Storr. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Ryan O'Meera. Music: Doubt Point. Recorded at TYX Studios, Kings Cross, London.