The Headhunter Turned Therapist | Kathleen Saxton

Who gets paid when a story travels? | Richard Welsh

Summary Richard Welsh on COPA90, Decent Partners, and why AI is a translation tool, not a threat. Episode Overview Richard Welsh beat David Beckham's team to a YouTube channel with no rights and no leverage, just a deep understanding of how networks actually work. What followed was 20 years of arriving early to every platform shift: Bebo, MySpace, YouTube Originals, Web3, and now AI. Welsh has called the current AI moment the largest creative value extraction in human history: every model trained on human intelligence, packaged by a corporation, rented back to the people who generated it. His company, Decent Partners, is the attempt to build something structurally different: a network that routes value back through the people who made the work, rather than the companies that own the infrastructure. This is a long conversation that moves fast. Welsh is someone who thinks in systems, rivers, sediment, network effects, and James Kirkham gets him to slow down and show the working. The Advent calendar story at the start is one of the best career origin stories this show has aired. The AI framing at the end reframes the debate without dismissing the risk. The bit in the middle, Welsh nearly advising KSI to dial it back, is the most instructive 90 seconds on the difference between platform experience and platform understanding. Chapters  (00:00) The gut bacteria story (01:45) Intro: COPA90 and creative value extraction (04:30) The Advent calendar: getting into Hat Trick at 19 (08:15) Development, TV, and how ideas actually happened (11:00) Bebo: the platform the adults didn't understand (15:30) COPA90: pitching against Beckham with no rights (20:30) KSI and the advice Welsh is glad he didn't land (23:00) Bitcoin, digital scarcity, and Web3 (29:00) Tether, TrumpCoin, and the pattern behind the noise (33:30) Everything is a story, and Bitcoin proved it (36:00) Decent Partners: currency, credit, context (42:00) AI as aggregated human intelligence (47:00) Resilience over towers "The intelligence is ours. There's nothing artificial or alien about it : it's just our intelligence that in aggregate creates this incredible translation tool." — Richard Welsh About the Guest Richard Welsh co-founded COPA90, the YouTube-native football channel that beat established rights-holders to one of the platform's earliest funded slots. He has worked in development at Hat Trick, RDF, Endemol, and Studio Lambert, and has won awards for Who Killed Summer and You, Me & the Apocalypse. He is the founder of Decent Partners, a network-native company building tools that distribute credit, payment, and knowledge through the communities that generate them. Listen Elsewhere  APPLE : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/storyco/id1886770413 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@StoryCoPodcast LINKTREE: ⁠https://linktr.ee/storycopod⁠ [https://linktr.ee/storycopod] Credits  StoryCo is a TellTale Industries production. Host: James Kirkham. Guest: Richard Welsh. Producer: Jago Lee. Assistant Producer: Nelly Batt. Editor: Emma Gifford. Recorded at TYX Studios, King's Cross. Theme: Doubt Point. Special thanks: Craig Heptinstall, Jack Freegard, Tyler Newton, Isa Gibson.

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