Kathleen Saxton: Founder of The Lighthouse Company

0:00Elliot Moss:Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues. The world's greatest jazz, soul and blues. From the world's greatest artists. This is Jazz FM. Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musician shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is practicing psychotherapist and author Kathleen Saxton, founder of The Lighthouse Company, a leadership headhunting firm and co-founder of Psyched Ventures, a coaching and psychotherapy business.

0:46Elliot Moss:Having held leadership positions at media owners such as Sky TV and Global Radio and within agencies PhD and Saatchi and Saatchi, Kathleen founded back in 2009 the Lighthouse Company, talent agents to the C-suite that went on to place hundreds of CEOs around the world. While probing beneath an interviewee's polished persona, as she said, Kathleen's questions revealed personal experiences that led her to realize, and I quote, if I want to ask those questions responsibly, I need training in psychotherapy or counseling. Sounds like that's what I'm doing next. Kathleen chose to study psychotherapy over five years while raising two children and running her own business.

1:23Elliot Moss:And in 2016, having fallen in love, as she says, with this new profession, she co-founded Psyched Ventures, offering company, team, and individual psychology, corporate retreats, and performance programs for executives. And later this year, Kathleen's following her first book, My Parent, The Peacock, Discovery and Recovery from Narcissistic Parents, which came out last year, with Sly and Mighty, a book all about the impact of narcissistic leadership in business. I'm very pleased to have you here. And I want to start with, it's kind of the question I had, where do we start? And the reason I have that is because you are a do not stay in one lane person.

1:58Very true. Very exciting, but equally costs me on energy. But yeah, I'm doing a lot of things at the moment.

2:04Elliot Moss:But always, I mean, I think if you look at your life, people talk about chapters and sometimes they go one after another and sometimes they fold over. Yours is sort of a bit of everything. It is, isn't it? Why? I think my dad said to me when I was a young girl, don't be a Coca-Cola bottle. And what he meant by that was they all look and sound and taste the same. Be brave enough to be who you want to be and follow what you feel you want to follow and have the courage to do that no matter what. And I think it just stayed with me, which is to, if you can imagine it, then why can't it be you? why don't you find a pathway to make that happen, whatever it is?

2:45And I think I've just always done that.

2:48Elliot Moss:The first thing you did work-wise? My very first job was I was Theo Perfitis' PA for about a year. I used to wear catsuits to work, poor old Theo. Was that just to put him off? Just to put him off. He took me to meetings that I had no purpose to be in, but he allowed me to view and listen in to him negotiating and doing all sorts of things. We remain friends after all these years. And I think he also gave me a flavor of entrepreneurship. He definitely showed me what it's like to be free, to be liberated, to follow what you need to follow. So whilst I've been in and out of corporate roles and entrepreneurial roles, in my absolute heart of hearts, I'm an entrepreneur.

3:30Elliot Moss:But those corporate days, and I mentioned some of the organizations, Sky and Global and loads of others as well. what was the attraction to that world if now we're here talking about the various things that you've set up i think it was to learn how to do it strategically though i mean was it a choice it was a real choice i was very clear about working for good brands and good people so i would even early on i would do my research so even if something i'll give you an example when i was at sky at the time you know we were trading off itv prices and we were relatively lowly at the time I think our biggest rating show was The Simpsons and that was, you know, head and shoulders above most other things on the stations at the time.

4:13But I remember thinking maybe I should go and work for ITV because they're so much bigger, etc. But I did my research and I figured out if I went there, I'd end up just spot matching P &G. And I thought that I won't learn anything doing that. Whereas being at Sky, I had to fight for every penny that we got in the sales team. and that taught me how to sell properly and how to storytell properly, etc. And then when I moved to radio, a similar thing, it was an up-and-coming medium, if you like, when I went to MSM and part of Capital and then EMAP, as Bauer as it is now. I quite like the fights. I quite like the struggle and the strive.

4:49That excites me rather than something where maybe back in the day we had the old joke that you open the window at television and the money fell in sort of thing. I like trying for things. I find there's much more payback when you achieve something that may not necessarily have been guaranteed.

5:06Elliot Moss:Do you need fights? Is that what drives you generally? I think I grew up with fights in every sense. So I guess it's familiar to me, even if it's not great. You know, I was homeless at 11, so it was a fight to have safety as a kid in many ways. I think the possibility of going to university was just not on the table because of the financial situation with my upbringing. And so to get a job in the advertising industry, which is what I wanted to do early on, was very difficult. You know, it was 1990. It was a recession back then. And so I think I'm just, for me, it's an everyday situation. I kind of wish sometimes it wasn't, but it definitely was.

5:49So I guess I've just been trained in that way. I'm not saying that's necessarily great all the time, but it's very familiar to me. So I guess I've learned to find that there's a thrill in that rather than it being something that might make other people very anxious. I think I'm almost driven to overcome the difficulty rather than be fearful of it. So for me, it's like, give me a tricky job. Give me, tell me that we cannot do something and I will damn well make sure that we do. I think there's something about that, which there's some mischief in that. I don't know how life would feel if it was very very straightforward and simple because I'm so used to always having the next thing that I'm trying to get done and that's in a way a sanitized

6:29Elliot Moss:version of trauma isn't it I mean you've got trauma sitting underneath and you've talked openly and you're a psychotherapist so to getting to someone's individual trauma and life experience is critical to understand and unlock it yes but trauma is utter fear lack of safety and all sorts of safety lack of control, you know, and great confusion often when you're younger as to why something's happening because no one's really explaining it to you. Well, it's hard enough as an adult to understand sometimes. Absolutely. An 11-year-old kid who's now homeless, you know, who's experiencing serious problems at home in the family environment, that's a thing.

7:03It's a real thing. And I think it does shape you. And my sense is that we, it's not as linear as this, but we sort of have two choices, we can either really go under with it or we can really kick very hard to come out and escape or find a different way with it. It's definitely made me who I am. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I think there are elements that I could live with again if I had to. And there's elements that I'd really rather not. Sometimes people say, well, I'm glad that happened to you. Actually, there's some elements that I really wish hadn't happened. But there's very many that did and have made me who I am and I think it allows me to really stand relatively confidently in most situations I don't ever really feel out of my depth I'm not intimidated by anybody's job titles or what they do or even behavior because it's relative isn't it you've seen things which are much worse of course and I have people that come to me in a clinical setting and obviously when I was training who have had the most appalling things happen to them so I think I'm pretty unshockable as well.

8:02I really, I always seek to understand. I don't judge anyone or anything. If anything, I'll lean forward because I want to understand how and why did that happen. It's fascinating to me.

8:12Elliot Moss:And there's something I just want to pick up on because you talk about my job and you sort of just alluded to it, is to get underneath the skin of the polished person, the persona I see in front of me. So Kathleen Saxon, I see in front of me an incredibly together human who's a founder, who's done this, who's done that, who writes, who appears on this morning and is incredibly eloquent about what she does. What's underneath? Underneath is a need for safety. Underneath is a need to succeed. Underneath is a very soft soul. I'm very, very soft underneath it all. I think most of my close friends would know that.

8:50But also underneath is someone who believes in justice and believes in doing the right thing and telling the truth, even when that's uncomfortable. And I think that also has cost me something in life sometimes. And equally, it affords me lots of wonderful things. So, I think there's something about not being able to be a bystander. I'm not a very good bystander. I'll always step forward. And again, I think sometimes understanding myself psychotherapeutically, it's because there was too many bystanders in my own upbringing. So, I've learned to be the person that I didn't have myself. So, I think that's what's underneath me, really.

9:25I think I'm a very loyal friend. If I say I'm going to do something, I'll do it. If you need to take me to a fight, I'll come and help if I can, but I'll equally come and rescue you if you need it. So I'm very steadfast and very soft, but my outer shell can often be much more bodicea.

9:42Elliot Moss:Stay with me for bodicea, Kathleen Saxton. She's my business shaper today. I'm having a fantastic conversation here. Hope you're enjoying it too. She'll be back in a couple of minutes. Right now, you're going to hear a tater from the Mishcon Academy digital sessions, which can be found and all the major podcast platforms. Mishkan Dere's Emily Knight talks to Charlotte Young, a fund manager at Troy Asset Management, about why women historically invest less than men and what's being done to change it. The Mishkan Academy Digital Sessions. Conversations on the legal topics affecting businesses and individuals today.

10:11Why do you think it's important to increase the numbers of women pursuing a career and investment at the graduate level? So it's a few things. I think firstly, this is a great job. No day is the same. We are always learning. It's so interesting. You're traveling, you're learning about the world. And I think women should be counted into that. The second is what we're doing is we're allocating capital across the economy. So we're, I think, performing a pretty important societal role, whether this is funding startups at the venture capital end, or at the publicly listed equity end, holding company management teams to account.

10:49So asking them, why are your carbon emissions X? What are your policies on diversity at board level? Why should it only be or predominantly be men around the table at that point? I think it's really important that we're all holding those businesses to account together. And then at the startup end, there is a problem whereby female founders generally receive a lot less funding than their male counterparts. And in some senses, there's no wonder because if you've got a homogenous set of decision makers who quite often they might just not see the business case for perhaps that female product or a minority product which just you can't relate to so you need to have those decision makers being more diverse to understand where the money needs to go and then the third thing diverse teams make better decisions and we've got a fiduciary duty to our clients many of my clients are charities we've got to optimize their returns so i want to have a good balance of perspectives on the team.

11:46And part of that balance is having a gender mix as well. The Mishcon Academy digital sessions. To access advice for businesses that is regularly updated, please visit mishcon.com. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishcon D 'Oreya. It's business, but it's personal.

12:08Elliot Moss:You can enjoy all our former business shapers on the jazz shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again if you pop jazz shapers into your podcast platform of choice my guest there is kathleen saxton founder of the lighthouse company a leadership headhunting firm and co-founder of psyched ventures a coaching and psychotherapy business and a writer britain what was it what's the latest one coming out it's called uh sly and mighty good coming out later this year that's the the communications person and you still knows how to nail the headline listen i was a marketeer right i was gonna say well it's good yeah well And so there's a thing that underpins the transitions you've made, and that is, and you've talked about this in some of the things I've read, it's a love of learning, and it's the belief that we're here to learn.

12:50Elliot Moss:Again, why? Is that an insecurity? Is that a passion for life and everything it offers? What's going on over there? I think there's probably two elements. I think the boring element is that having not gone to university, I'm sure early on there was probably some sort of a chip on shoulder, which meant I felt I needed to get an ology in something, if that makes sense, just to kind of tick that box. But actually, I hate not understanding things. And that also might be a control element, but I don't like not understanding. And I think I'm able to still just about manage my ego enough to be able to say when I don't understand something and ask someone to sit with me and show me how to do it.

13:27So I think realising that you can keep learning no matter what career you originally chose, I think is very interesting. And as we're beginning to realise that we're living longer, God willing, and we have access to all sorts of levels of education, whether it's in person or online or globally, why wouldn't we go and learn to be something else? We don't have to say, well, I decided to be a lawyer or I decided to be a marketer or I decided to be a doctor. And that's me for the rest of my days. I think we're starting to realise, and particularly having come out of the media industry, where it's incredibly ageist.

14:00You know, by the time you kind of hit 50, there's a question mark. If you're not a chairwoman or man or a CEO by then, you're waiting for the tap on the shoulder, I think. And so for that point, what are you going to do next? Because there's only so many non-exec directorships. There's only so many bread and breakfasts in Cornwall that you can go and run. So what are you going to go and do?

14:19Elliot Moss:I'd like to run a bed and breakfast in Cornwall. That sounds nice. I'm sure we can arrange that for you. Can we arrange it? I want a view of the sea. That's fine. You can do lots of things with a view of the sea, including being a psychotherapist. But to me, I looked at, I originally wanted to be a dentist. That's what I wanted to be when I was at school. For my whole teenage years, I did dental nursing in my summer holidays. I'm sure deeply illegally, I was mixing fillings and doing suction for dentists when I was 15 years old. I mean, literally, I loved it. And so I went and looked whether or not I could go back and become a dentist.

14:50I was in my mid-40s and I looked at whether or not I could become a doctor. Like I looked at a number of things. And the truth is, you can go and do it. If you really want to go and do it, you can. So I'm really fascinated at the moment about why people wouldn't stop and think about would they go and retrain. And so when I'm doing coaching or psychotherapy with people that are looking at beginning to make a pivot or a shift, I'm encouraging them to just take a bit of a moment to pull the lens right back and think about what could it be rather than necessarily only adjacent careers. Because I think that we are, as I said, you could retrain at 50 and have another 20, 30 years in a completely different profession if you wanted to.

15:28I'm very keen to advocate for that.

15:32Elliot Moss:There's a thread I think as I look at what you've done which is around asking questions and wanting to know what the answers are not for the sake of the answer but because it genuinely pleases you to understand. Well I think it's how we connect. You know you and I would have been to many black tie do's across the years and sometimes you don't necessarily want to be there and my view is well I'm going to be sitting next to this person for the next two hours so I might as well see if I can actually connect with them. I could have small talk with them. I could ask them about the kids and how work is.

16:01But actually, what I really want to know as a human, as a headhunter, as a psychotherapist, I want to know what really makes you tick because that will be a much more enjoyable evening for me. I hope for them, but I don't know. So for me, every opportunity to actually really get to know someone is incredible. And I think it's also a massive gift for anyone to be generous enough, as you are right now, to ask questions of another human because the chances are they might give you an answer you weren't expecting and then you're connected and that's magical.

16:32Elliot Moss:Kathleen Saxon's my business shaper, music lover as well. Massively so. My dad was a pianist and an organist. My mum was a singer, my brother was a cellist. So I was surrounded by musicians. And you play? I play the flute and the piano and I always credit music as being the thing that probably saved me from a life of delinquency actually in many ways. I grew up in Gravesend which is not the most exciting of places That's a cultural mecca. It is absolutely a cultural mecca. In good ways, though, too. It's the third Sikh, and there's the most beautiful Sikh temple in Gravesend. And I went to a Catholic school, but I'm not Catholic.

17:05But it was a very tricky time, given what was going on in my life and given what was going on in the area that I lived in. And so at the age of 11, I was very lucky. My flute teacher, who's only recently passed away, was called Norman Blow. His name was Mr Blow.

17:19Elliot Moss:You can't make it up. Can't make it up. He taught the flute, the clarinet, and the oboe. and I was with him until I was 11. My dad took me to see him when I was five because I learnt the piano from four and he said she's way too young to be taught the flute and so my dad said, well, she reads music and she plays the piano. So he said, bring her next week and if she can get a note out of the mouthpiece of a flute, I will take her on. And if any of you know, if you can get a note out the top of a bottle, it's the same embouchure that you need. So of course I practiced it to death. I got the cleanest note out of that mouthpiece and poor old Norman Blow had to take me on.

17:53But I got to 11 and he said, I don't think I can take her much further. I think she needs to go somewhere else. So I very luckily got a scholarship to a music school and I went at weekends. And I think that stopped me from basically becoming a addict in Gravesend, genuinely. So that's the thing that saved me. And I think it also taught me to perform. So now speaking in public, going live on this morning, all those sorts of things, I'm very relaxed. Because when you play the flute or the piano, often if they're solos, and this is why I love boxing and things, Anything where you're a solo artist in a way, in some form, once it's live, once you go, that's it.

18:26You're on your own. Nobody can save you. You've got to deliver and you've got to bring it. And I really credit my music and my parents encouraging me to play music for the thing that has given me a lot of personal confidence.

18:38Elliot Moss:And that solo thing, and I read about your love of boxing, which kind of makes sense literally from a fighting point of view, but metaphorically that sense of also, as you said, being alone and being on there and performing. when you coach people within i know you've got coaches in the business but i imagine you know that you're involved in in that as well i suppose at its some ways psychotherapy might lead to well hold on a minute let's talk about this and then maybe people get something from it in terms of a behavioral change how do you help them be calm in those moments when they're literally on stage so i'm a big believer in understanding what we call internal family systems so all the little other ages of you that travel with you.

19:18So even sitting here now, there's a five-year-old Kathleen and there's a 13-year-old Kathleen and there's a 25-year-old. So they'll all have different feelings. And so I'll help them identify which one is scared or which one is intimidated or which one is excited so that they can begin to have a dialogue internally with those parts that travel with them to say, how are you really feeling? Check in with them. What do those parts need in order to be calm and to be excited about what they're about to go and do rather than to feel that actually that is kind of crippling for them in the moment. So I'll work with what part of them is it.

19:51Often people say to me, I'm very scared or I'm very anxious. And my view is, you are not, but a part of you is. Let's go and work with that part and get that healed. And then you'll feel much more together in whatever it is you're about to do.

20:04Elliot Moss:And in terms of jumping into the entrepreneurial thing over the years, was there a part of you stopping you doing that at any stage? I think the opposite. Having lost my home at 11 because my dad's business went bust, I actually lived the worst case scenario and survived. And I think when you've done that, you're not so frightened of it because you know that there'll be something that will happen that you'll save yourself or you'll find a way through or out of it. But even if the worst case happened, thank goodness it hasn't again, you would think, well, I survived it once, I can survive it again.