What does a talent agent actually do for their 10%? Why are creators and brands now sitting in the top ten earners at one of the biggest agencies in the world, next to the actors and the athletes? And why does the man who runs UTA in Europe tell his clients that a brand coming to them directly is a brand planning to undercut them?

Darnell Strom is Head of UTA Europe, the agent behind Malala Yousafzai, Michaela Coel, Jon Batiste and Karlie Kloss. He walks Poppy through how the money actually moves in the talent business, from the $30 million guarantees of the 90s and early 2000s to the equity deals being written for talent now, and what that teaches anyone negotiating their own worth without an agent in the room.

In this episode:

◼️ Why UTA signed YouTubers 20 years ago while rival agencies laughed, and who is scrambling now

◼️ Why TV and film went from 85% of UTA's business to under half in 15 years

◼️ How the definition of talent expanded to anyone with a platform and a following

◼️ Why creators and brands now sit in the top ten earners next to the actors and the athletes

◼️ What a brand is really doing when it comes to you directly instead of your agent

◼️ Why giving up 10% beats getting paid 50% less on a deal you negotiated yourself

◼️ Why the data on your own audience is the leverage you cannot get on your own

◼️ Why a creator's recommendation converts like a friend's, and what that is worth to a brand

◼️ Whether to stay the expert in one thing or expand, and how to expand without losing the audience

◼️ The film made with AI tools for $750,000 that reached cinemas because the audience asked

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What happens to your pension when there is barely one worker left per retiree? Why does a demographer say the best money decision you can make in your thirties is having a child? And why does he think the next great crisis will be a bond crisis?

Paul Morland is the demographer behind No One Left. His next book, Bust: The Economics of Population Decline, is out in November.

He walks Poppy through the economics of a shrinking population, a story usually argued as culture and never costed as money, and what it means for your tax bill and the state that promised to look after you.

In this episode:

◼️ How a low birth rate turns 100 people into 40, then into 16, inside two generations

◼️ What an ageing country does to your wages, your savings and your tax bill

◼️ Japan as the preview, going from 8 or 9 workers supporting each retiree to barely one

◼️ Why Paul thinks the next crash will come from governments that cannot pay their bills

◼️ Why he calls the state a Ponzi scheme once the population pyramid inverts, and what he thinks happens when it can no longer meet its promises

◼️ Why he says not to count on a state pension, and what he tells anyone in their thirties to do instead

◼️ Why you cannot fix a worker shortage by sending half the workers home

◼️ What happens to birth rates when men pick up more of the housework

◼️ The changes employers could make tomorrow, starting with why offices have gyms and no nurseries

◼️ How the tax system could pay mothers back for the pension years they lose

◼️ Why he does not believe AI or robots will be looking after us in old age

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Jana Sascha started De La Vali selling dresses from the back of a car in Ibiza, to anyone who would buy them. Nearly ten years later the brand is stocked by its dream retailers, worn by Kate Moss, and online sales are up 300% in a year. So how do you actually make a fashion brand profitable?

This week Poppy sits down with Jana Sascha, founder and creative director of De La Vali. Jana breaks down the real numbers behind scaling an independent fashion brand, from a first collection sewn on a shoestring to a restructure and back to profit.

In this episode:

◼️ How much it really costs to start a fashion brand

◼️ Why on-time delivery decides whether your stockists keep you

◼️ How shifting from wholesale to 60% direct to consumer can transform a business 

◼️ How a spare dress handed to Kate Moss at a party changed the brand's trajectory 

◼️ How to pick the most important first hire for a small brand

◼️ Why giving retailers a 2.4 to 2.8x margin can still make you money

◼️ Why Jana now keeps De La Vali privately funded and running on its own profits

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What do you actually get paid to write a Hollywood film? Can someone steal your script if you put it online? And why does the man who worked for Leonardo DiCaprio's production company say talent alone won't get you hired?

Franklin Leonard is the creator of The Black List, the platform where any writer in the world can upload their script and get it in front of Hollywood.

We walk through the money side of an industry most people only know from the red carpet. If you work in a creative field, or want to, this one is a masterclass in protecting yourself financially when you never know where the next paycheck is coming from.

In this episode:

◼️ How Franklin Leonard turned a problem at work into The Black List, the platform that changed how Hollywood finds scripts

◼️ Information is power: why knowing what things pay, what's in demand and what the other side wants puts you ahead in any negotiation

◼️ What screenwriters really get paid, and what's left after agents, managers, lawyers and tax

◼️ Why the writers went on strike, and why Franklin says writers are working class people, not red carpet celebrities

◼️ His number one rule for creatives: always be writing something you own

◼️ His Hollywood Finance 101 for creatives: save your money and stay where you are

◼️ His unfiltered take on AI in Hollywood

◼️ Why your net worth should never define your worth

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The publishing industry pays writers last and cuts them first. Substack pays 50 of its creators over $1 million a year. One woman edited Women's Health, Cosmopolitan and Elle, saw where it was all going, and left to build the other side.

In this episode of Hot Girl Finance, Farrah Storr, Head of Substack International, breaks down exactly how the platform pays, who's getting rich, and why the industry that underpaid writers for a century is being replaced.

In this episode:

◼️ The Substack business model, explained in one breath, who sets the price, who takes a cut, and where the money actually goes

◼️ The answer to "but how would anyone find me?" and why you don't need to bring an audience to start earning

◼️ What Farrah makes from one piece of writing a week, and how it compares to her editor's salary at Women's Health

◼️ The story behind The Free Press: built on Substack, sold for a number that changed how writers think about the platform

◼️ Why almost everyone starts as a side hustle, and the exact signal it's time to go all in

◼️ The one way writers should never use AI, and why readers can always tell

◼️ Why she says you haven't missed the boat, Substack is only just launching in France, Italy, Brazil and Japan

The boat hasn't sailed. It's waiting for you.

Subscribe⁩ for new episodes every week.
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Should you be using Klarna, or is Buy Now, Pay Later just expensive debt dressed up in millennial pink?

We decode Klarna's origin story, who actually pays for "interest-free," the five ways Klarna makes money (late fees included), the psychology trick behind the pink button, and how to play it smart if you use BNPL anyway.

In this episode:

◼️Where Klarna came from, a Burger King friendship, a lost uni competition, and a valuation rollercoaster from $45.6B to $6.7B to the NYSE

◼️Who actually pays for "interest-free" 

◼️Klarna's five revenue streams, including the one nobody talks about: your late fees

◼️The psychology trap: how present bias makes four small payments feel like not spending at all

◼️The stats: 68% of BNPL users say it's made them overspend, and 29% now use it for groceries

◼️What actually happens when you miss a payment — late fees, collections, and your credit score

◼️The hot girl BNPL strategy: five rules for using it without letting it use you

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Venetia Archer is the founder and CEO of Ruuby, the app that has delivered over a million manicures, massages and blow dries to front doors across the UK, Switzerland, France and the UAE. She can tell what treatment you'll book just by looking at you, and she built her company pitching male investors an economy they didn't know existed.

In this episode:

◼️ Why you should know your numbers cold and check them every single day

◼️ How to hire slowly: the wrong people are the most expensive mistake you'll make

◼️ Why investing young beats almost everything else, thanks to compound interest

◼️ How a standing money meeting makes hard conversations with your partner easier

◼️ Why taking on an investor is a professional marriage, and the red flags to spot first

◼️ Why beauty is armour, not frivolity

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Anna Wintour ordered from her personally. Jennifer Lopez wore the first thing she ever designed. But Melissa Odabash started out selling bikinis from a bag backstage, barely making a dollar on each one. Twenty-five years and 70 countries later, she's never taken outside investment and still owns every bit of her brand.

Melissa Odabash MBE is the founder and designer of her eponymous luxury swimwear label. A former fit model for Valentino and Fendi, she turned everything she absorbed backstage into one of the most iconic names in swimwear.

In this episode:

◼️ How a Victoria's Secret catalogue took her from 70 pieces a week to thousands

◼️ Why she's never taken outside investment, and the first hire she says every founder needs

◼️ How she got her collection into Harvey Nichols with one very bold phone call

◼️ Why every penny she makes goes into property

◼️ How to stick to one thing when everyone tells you to expand

◼️ Why she says you should never start a business for money

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Amanda Cassatt helped bring Ethereum to market as CMO of ConsenSys, then founded the web3 firm Serotonin, co-founded NFT platform Mojito, and wrote a book on web3 marketing.

She makes the case that most of us are quietly losing money without realising it. Our savings sit in accounts earning next to nothing while the bank keeps the difference.

In this episode:

◼️ Why she thinks the economy has become so "calcified" that wealth now only flows from young to old, and how early crypto briefly flipped that

◼️ What crypto actually is, in plain English: blockchains, bitcoin vs ethereum, stablecoins, and why holding your own money matters

◼️ The wild bit of history: the internet was meant to have money built into it from day one, and why it took crypto to finish the job PayPal couldn't

◼️ How to spot a solid, battle-tested platform from the projects that don't make it

◼️ Her contrarian take on AI: revolutionary, or just "glorified autocomplete"? And why she thinks it's quietly homogenising how we all think

◼️ How to make big decisions without agonising, and the Japanese idea of ikigai she swears by

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Crypto talk. Most of us are quietly nodding along with no clue what any of it means. So today it's a crash course, we're going back to basics. Crypto, blockchain, bitcoin, ethereum, web3, defi and tokenization.

By the end, you'll actually know what it’s all about:

◼️ Why crypto is built on cryptography, the same math that keeps your messages and bank login safe

◼️ Why "on the blockchain" means no single person, company or government can tamper with it

◼️ Why bitcoin is like a calculator and ethereum is like a smartphone

◼️ Why web3 is called the next internet: your accounts, content and data would live on a blockchain and actually belong to you

◼️ How defi and tokenization could change money for everyone, and why BlackRock's CEO compares it to the internet in 1996

Subscribe for new episodes every week.

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