All Episodes

October 14, 2025 • 35 mins

Two words absolutely nobody wants to hear? "You're fired!" As taboo as we tend to make losing your job, it's something almost everybody will experience. Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill know exactly how it feels, and today, they're joining the podcast to share personal stories, inspirational narratives, and essential advice from their brand-new book, "All the Cool Girls Get Fired." Together, we're saying goodbye to the shame around getting let go and all the cool girls are tuning in.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Before we get into today's episode, I have some very
exciting news to share with you all. You know that
on this podcast, we're all about celebrating the women who
dare to reimagine their lives, step into the unknown, and
just keep moving forward with courage. So it's fitting that today,
October fourteenth, is the launch day of Reese Witherspoon's debut

(00:21):
suspense novel, Gone Before Goodbye, co written with the Master
of Twist's himself, Harlan Coben. At the center of this
page journer is Maggie McCabe, an indomitable woman who search
for truth takes her deep inside a world of global
power and dark secrets, a journey that tests her resilience,
her courage, and her will to fight for what matters.

(00:44):
This is Reese's original idea, y'all. This is a huge
deal and it was brought to life in partnership with
one of the world's most acclaimed storytellers. And just like
The Bright Side, Gone Before Goodbye is about hope, grit,
and the strength to keep going even when the odds
are stacked against you. The novel its shelves today, and
Reese and Harlan are already kicking off their book tour,

(01:05):
So get your tickets at a city near you and
make sure you get your hands on the thriller of
the season. So let's talk about what's coming up today
on the bright side. But first I'm going to start
with a question. What do Oprah Winfrey, Katie Kuric, and
Lisa Kudro have in common? They've all been fired. Getting

(01:25):
fired is so common that it is a shared experience,
even among the most successful echelon of people get this.
In one month alone this past summer, one point eight
million people lost their jobs. And yet when it happens
to us, it feels so personal, like no one in
the world has ever experienced this. And there's a lot

(01:45):
of shame that can come with it too. There's the
worry and confusion that comes after it. How do I
get myself back out there? How do I update my resume?
I mean, depending on how long you've been out of
the job market, the way you actually get a job
in your industry could have changed. And I mean don't
even get me started on medical benefits and health insurance,
because that's a whole other issue. It is a messy

(02:09):
time to be adulting. Yell you don't need me to
tell you that. If only there was a guide something
or someone who's been there before who can hold our
hands after we get fired, so that we can turn
these professional plateaus into our own Oprah like opportunities.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
What we're really urging women to do is number one,
remember your own value, and you brought the value to
the job, not the other way around. And to look around.
There's millions of people in the same position as you,
and there's a community there if you want to find it.
Take a minute to think about what made you more
happy and less happy over the course of your career.
What can you do to increase the happiness and decrease

(02:46):
the unhappiness. So from like an Oprah situation where it
was personal and there was all of these overtones to
that place, so unhealthy racism, middle aged boys club stuff,
all that stuff she had to deal with, and the
beautiful twist fight with Oprah is a year later, the
new manager comes up to her and says, start a
talk show, what do you reckon? And the rest is history.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. Today we're sharing the help you might need.
Maybe not today, but someday. Christina O'Neill and Laura Brown
are here to share their own experiences of getting very
publicly fired, and they're going to tell us how they
built those moments into a community of revolution even and

(03:29):
there's a book too. So if you're ready to take
control of the narrative of being fired, to be jolted
out of your comfort zone and to see the prosperity
that is down the road, this is the conversation for you.
Let's get into it with Christina O'Neill and Laura Brown.
Laura Brown, Christina O'Neil, Welcome to the bright Side.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Thanks for having us well.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
I can't wait to talk to you about your book,
All the Cool Girls Get Fired. You are both fashion
media loyalty at this point in your careers. But let's
go back in time because you were both growing up
on different sides of the world. Laura you were in Australia,
Christina you were in Virginia, And I'm so curious, what
was the movie, TV show or magazine that you came

(04:14):
across that made each of you want to work in media.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Christina, do you want to take that as the local? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
I started with seventeen and Mademoiselle, So that was like
probably my preteen years. But I think both Laura and
I share the sort of dazzling lights as a Vogue
as our kind of magazine that really got us hooked
on this business.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It came to Australia like it was beamed down from
another universe, like here's the mothership where all the fashion, entertainment,
all this stuff lives, and you're getting a dispatch from it.
You know, everything was extra shiny and extra glamorous. It
feels at the time foreign and mysterious and unattainable to you.
It was like my os you know, even though I

(04:57):
was in oz.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
So it sounds like it made you feel connected to
something bigger. Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
There was like a whole world out there that we
needed to, you know, conquer and explore.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
And we didn't even know how. I remember like sticking
your nose in there and just being wide eyed when
you were in the middle of reading it. So we
didn't know how and when, but we knew we loved it,
and we knew that just that love and excitement would
propel us. But when we were teenagers, we had no idea.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Well, also, magazines Back then, it was such a tactile,
immersive experience. You could literally smell the fragrance that whoever
the company was that was selling it. You know, Oh
my god, sense strips, I forgot about those. Remember the
sticky pages you know you'd yeah thumb through and stumble

(05:44):
across different treasures.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, there would be like competitive sense strips, and that
none of them complimented each other.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's an old Have I even opened a magazine with
a sense strip like that doesn't even exist anymore? What
an era? Oh the sweet smell of excess, success.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Access, excess and success, Christina. Before you became the editor
of WSJ magazine, you worked for Cannice Bushnell, who is
the real life columnist that Sex and the Cities Carrie
Bradshaw is based on. How did you land that job
while you were a student at NYU.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, it took a lot of gumption. I called Candas
up from a payphone back in the day when you
could call four one one and get someone's phone number,
which is kind of wild to think about, but I
called her from a payphone and said I was a
student at NYU. She had gone to NYU, which I knew,
so I thought our mutual alma mater would potentially be

(06:41):
the hook, and I asked if I could interview her
for a paper. So after that, she clearly liked what
I had written, and the assignment went well, and she
was in the market for an assistant. A couple of
days a week, she was still writing the column for
The New York Observer, which was a super popular column
that was then bought by a book publisher by Grove.

(07:04):
Her editor there compiled her year's worth of columns, which
were basically Carrie's diaries, right like every week there was
a new adventure that would publish in this weekly newspaper
that was very popular in the nineties in New York.
And then from that book, Darren Starr bought the project
and developed it for HBO. So I was with Candace.

(07:26):
I'll never forget her turning to me and saying, but
what do you really think about Sarah Jessica Parker?

Speaker 1 (07:32):
What did you say to her? What did you think
about Sarah Jessica Parker.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
I had grown up on square pegs, so of course
I was a huge Sarah Jessica Parker fan, and I
thought she would be perfect for the role. I think
the casting even However, many years later they got it
right out of the gate. So it was a really
exciting time because that first season, Candace was quite involved
and occasionally we would go to set and I was
actually an extra in one of the episodes, which one

(07:58):
I don't know this. It was filmed at Webster Hall.
It was the fashion show when.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Carrie no Way, when she falls down.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, and Willie Garth goes backstage and there I am.
I played a dresser. You see me for maybe one
point three seconds.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
No way, Wait, this is so cool. I'm going to
now go back and watch it and being like I
know her, I know her.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yes, I did not get my sad card from that episode.
Don't worry. I am not a threat to the entertainment industry.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well, Christina, I bet seeing that transition from a column
at the New York Observer to now this television phenomenon
really shaped your view of what was possible in this industry.
And Laura, you spent eleven years at Harper's Bazaar. You
became editor in chief of in Style. So we heard
about how Christina called Candice Bushnell from a payphone. I

(08:47):
want to know, what's the wildest thing you've ever done
for a job.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
I think the probably the wildest thing I've done for
a job is getting on a plane, a one way
ticket from Sydney to New York and arriving on September
the fourth, two thousand and one, with what I refer
to as one and a half friends. I had one friend, Libby,
who was a fashion editor of the New York Post
at the time. I'd met her when she'd come down
to Sydney for something. And my half friend, who has
know my real friend Madis, didn't know him very well,

(09:11):
was a guy called Meha Rashan who was at New
York Magazine at the time. So I was on this
sort of foreign journalist visa, so I was allowed to
be in the country if I wrote for you know,
people outside. And I just showed up and I'd packed
two suitcases and all these high heels, and I landed
right before Fashion Week, and when this fateful evening of
September tenth, two thousand and one, we obviously all know

(09:31):
what happened the next day, but that wasn't I met
Christina and we were at the Mark Jacob's fashion show,
which I must have crashed or Libby must have put
me in under a coat. I don't know, but speaking
of Sarah Jessica Parker, she's a theme here because we
walked into this show and I was dazzled. I was like,
everyone was famous. Oh god, I'm going to explode. I'm
tottering around and asked sjp's in the corner, and it

(09:52):
was just this crazy party. And I think that for
both of us, we were suddenly kind of quote unquote
and sometimes literally in the room, you know, in the
room that we'd mythologized for so long, you know, So
I think that that really.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Had been on the sixth row at the fashion show.
But we were there.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
We were there. I didn't see a model with a
pair of legs for years because the seats were so bad,
you know what I mean. It was like just toursos going. Yeah,
but we were so happy to be there.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
And Christina, did you experience any of those cliches about
the fashion media industry that we've seen in Devil War's product,
like those early days when that kind of toxic behavior
was really normalized. Did you experience any of that?

Speaker 3 (10:35):
I certainly did my fair share of dry cleaning runs
for Canvas, but I always had sort of a purpose
once I was within the walls of a media organization.
I was never an assistant in the media business, so
by the time I had started, I was always a
junior editor, so I had a purpose. I had my
own column when I was at New York Magazine. Even

(10:55):
when I started at Harper's Bizarre, I was like the
seventh man on the bed and in the fashion features department.
But I was never an assistant. Where a lot of
that sort of like toxic behavior manifested was when people
were in kind of like high stress, high kind of
pressure situations and the only person they could turn to
to take out the pressure on was like the junior assistant.
But I sort of blissfully circumnavigated all of that, I

(11:18):
think because I put my head down and did the work,
and I think that's one of the things that is
still paying off. I think Laura and I still sort
of think of ourselves as the ones in the room
who are just like doing it, as opposed to like
pointing and trying to get other people to do it.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
For us, it feels better to do it yourself.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Well.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
The reason why I'm dwelling on this chapter of your
careers is because I think It's important to set the
stage here because what you're doing with your book, All
the Cool Girls Get Fired, is you're taking on a
pretty daring challenge. You're rebranding and normalizing being fired, which
is such a universal experience that we don't really talk about.
You've even gone as far as to create this club

(11:58):
of cool girls who've all this experience. How did you
land on the title of your book.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
I tend to come up with the big, blasty things generally,
and they just tend to occur to me. But I
think the earlier years of fashion and all the conditioning
that it would ask its reader to participate in, like, Oh,
you've got to have this, You've got to buy that,
You've got to have this body, this jacket, this did
it da da. So much of the narrative of magazines
was all the cool girls have these things. Oh, all

(12:25):
the cool girls wear this geene, all the cool girls
buy this shoe. So it was just a well worn trope.
So I just my brain instantly just went, all the
cool girls get fired. Oh oh, because it takes that
whole trope, it instantly subverts it. But also what it
does is takes the original essence of that and gives
you ownership and makes you cool because you admitted that

(12:47):
this happened to you. And in this day and age,
I'm show we'll get into it. It's ninety eight percent
of the time not personal, So like, admit it, get
on with it, move on with your life, because so
much more is going to open up to you. So
the first way to do it is by that title,
which was originally dreampt up for an Instagram post that
I had decided because Christina was fired. You know, you're

(13:08):
in a bit after me. And when we first met up,
I was like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna
take a picture of ourselves. We're going to look super
cute and we're captioning and all the cool girls get fired.
And she was like okay, because we were like, yeah,
we did. We're really good at our jobs and we
got fired and that's all right.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
We've got to take a short break. But if you
are loving this conversation with Laura Brown and Christina O'Neill,
please subscribe to the bright Side, leave us a review,
and share this episode with a friend who needs to
hear it. And we're back. What do you remember about
the moment that you've found out that you were fired.
Did you feel blindsided?

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I got twenty minutes notice, and my immediate boss will
coment like hi, Liz, and then there's like hi, and
she's clearly you know she's on with an HR professional
and it's all the language. You know, they're always reading
from a piece of paper, and I know, I think
I got a phone from a man and I was with, like,
I let my husband here and now a gallant works
with us sometimes, and I was like, I've just been
we've just been fired, but we had to get back

(14:08):
on another call like right away. So I think shot
guides a lot of things, and I actually think that
sometimes in the first instance, Shot can be a real
protector in a way. Like I think it was like,
oh no, we got fight. Okay, I got fight, but
I'm good at what I did. I certainly didn't have
a movie scene of wailing on a bed or anything,

(14:29):
because you're also sort of del used by correspondence and
this is strangely, Oh my god, I'm not trying to punt.
The bright side of this thing is that you're there.
I remember, like I had sneakers on because I was
supposed to go to an appointment, and I just went
and sat on the edge of my bed like one
leg off, like really ungainedly, and I had my phone
and my computer. She's like bing bing bing bing bing bing.

(14:51):
But it's like you have all these people being in
touch telling you're fantastic, and so I was like, are
you allergy? But you're not dead, So you're just getting
like and another friend will get in touch, another friend
will get in touch, and suddenly this network sort of
shows up.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, Christina, I want to know if you were blindsided
by your firing. Both of you dealt with pretty public firings.
I want to know what that experience was, like.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Oh yeah, like press release, press releases went out. I
was blindsided in the sense that I had sort of
told myself we had a regime change at the Wall
Street Journal. There was a new editor in chief who
had started in February, and I figured we were successful.

(15:34):
We were over here in our corner. We were sort
of doing what we were doing. We were making money,
you know. The magazine had continued to be like well
received and well regarded. So I had sort of told myself,
I'm the least of her worries. That's why she's not
meeting with me, So you know, February goes by, March
goes by. We're now at the end of April and
we have our first meeting. It was set to be

(15:56):
in her office. My team and I had done power
and decks, and you know, I was ready to go
in and kind of knock her socks off and talk
about the future. In about ten minutes before our meeting,
she changed the meeting location from her office to the
HR floor. So I knew instantly that something was up.

(16:18):
And I was actually standing around with a couple of
my colleagues at the time and I said, be right back,
I'm going to go get fired. And I was, in
fact correct.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
What was your biggest insecurity immediately after you're firing?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Healthcare? Look, you could do a whole podcast of me
railing about the healthcare system in this country. And again,
we didn't have Goldman salaries, but we had good salaries.
I'm the breadwinner in my household, I pay for mine
in my husband's health care, I pay for my mum's
care in Australia. So you're just suddenly looking at if
you end up working for yourself, you're looking at two
thousand dollars a month to basically get like, I don't know,

(16:58):
a discount on some xanax, like if you go to
the hospital if you get a hit by a truck.
You know, that's what it is. It's like roof falling
in insurance really, and so for me, that was the
biggest vulnerability. And also then you don't understand how to
navigate it. There's all these different plans and it's like
deliberately made so hard, and I just got physically angry
writing the healthcare chapter because I got like, again, I

(17:20):
can afford that money, right, but what if all these
millions and millions of people in this country on Medicaid,
which they may or may not lose in the next
little bit, you know, how the hell are they supposed
to So we did make sure to cover and especially
in every chapter if it could be money legal, we
cover everybody in every income frame, like if you have this,
call this person. If you need legal aid, call this person.

(17:42):
Here's how you can get on medicaid. Again, the vulnerability
is the most terrifying feeling, and there are people with
less resources than we have, you know, and it's so
so scary. So we want to be able to pick
up a book. Go, okay, I can do that, all right,
And that's all the things that we wish we'd known.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
It sounds like fairly recently you both realized you had
this shared experience of being fired, and you realized that
you wanted to share this story with a wider audience.
Take me into those conversations.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Yeah, it's just sort of circumstantial, really. You know, we
worked together for eight years in Harper's Bazar. We've been
dear friends for almost twenty five Jesus years, and it
just happened. We were on sort of parallel tracks in
a way at Bizarre, and then Christina left to start
at WSJ mag in twenty twelve and I ended up
getting the install gig in twenty sixteen, so it did
both become editors in chief as well. So we had

(18:52):
similar timelines the whole way. But then I, after five
years insta I got canned first, and then Christina did
a year and a bit later. So it just was
our what happened, you know, in our lives and friendships
and in any ways any friends would when I got fired,
Christiana's you're right, what do you need? You know? All that,
and then the similar thing happened fourteen months later.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, when our friends kind of tease that like, thank
god Laura got fired first because she sort of had
come through it and was her plucky self and kind
of like, you know, okay, so like this happened, but
obviously she was like devastated and it was a shock,
but at the same time, because of her sort of
like positivity and confidence the minute it happened to me,

(19:35):
she was the first person who hopped into my head,
and I was in fact texting her under the table
while I was sitting in the HR room, you know,
being handed my fate. And so not only was Laura
there for me, like personally, but she became like a
resource because when you get fired, there are so many
things that you don't know until you need to know them, right,

(19:58):
Like do you.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Need a lawyer?

Speaker 3 (20:00):
What is cobra? You know, and all of these things.
So Laura was also an emotional resource, but she was
also like a resource resource in the sense of, you know,
I was just trying to get like numbers and information
out of her. So after we had this drink, the
fateful Instagram post where you know, the response was so
immediate and so many women started writing in this happened

(20:22):
to me, Oh my god, you know, welcome to the club.
Like we really kind of immediately recognized that there was
a community around this sort of ownership of admitting what
had happened to us. And so the next morning Laura
had written the headline. But I called her and said,
this is a book. You know, this is a book,
Like there's so much information out there that we can

(20:45):
compile into one place, but not only that, there are
women out there whose stories we can learn from.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Because you feel helpless. Look number one, you know, regardless
of your income and breaking news, having more money than
less is easier. The feeling is the same when you
get fired, and the feeling is like a word. Maybe
you'll bleep, but the feeling is like shit. You feel naive,
you feel vulnerable. And this is coming from two ladies
who are by all intents and purposes successful, had successful jobs.

(21:15):
But we didn't know about Cobra. I didn't know that
I wouldn't have health insurance for a week until I
got a card in the mail. We didn't know all
of these things, and we thought, if we don't know
these things, that means everyone else doesn't know these things.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
I hadn't updated my resume in a decade, Like I
hadn't touched my resume. Like the job market and the
tools and the resources that people were using to get
hired had changed dramatically in the decade that I was
like sitting you know, comfortably, you know, kept.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
At at WSJ, We were on LinkedIn, you know.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
So it wasn't just the sort of like scary things
that felt very real and immediate. It was also the
stuff about like getting in the headspace to get back
out there, and how do you go about that when
you've like literally take your foot off the gas because
you've been like revving over here for ten years.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
What's really cool about this book that you've both written
is that it's bigger than just your experience. You are
just two women out of thousands of women who have
experienced this. And in your book you spoke with several successful,
high profile women who have also been fired, which I
really think does numbers in terms of normalizing this experience

(22:25):
for all of us. And let's talk about my mount
rushmore of women that you spoke to for this book.
Katie Kuric, Oprah Winfrey, Lisa Kudro. I mean, there are
so many others. What surprised you about hearing their personal
experiences with being fired?

Speaker 3 (22:41):
They all felt like we did. There wasn't a single
woman who we interviewed who doesn't have total recall of
the moment that she was told she was being let go.
And I think that is the universality of the experience,
and the fact that these enormously successful women still carry
the moment that it happened to them with them to

(23:03):
this day was something that was so reassuring, because so
much of it is like, why is it taking me
so long to get over this? Why am I still
so bitter about this? Why can't I move on? And
to hear that they were all able to soar to
the heights that they've achieved but still have that feeling,

(23:23):
it was really reassuring to know that.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
And that was specifically why we chose these high profile,
sometimes highly famous, highly successful women, is because they did
feel like you. They were crying on the couch, They
did think all was lost. To be like Oprah Oprah
Winfrey who has like an island and a fresh vegetable
basket every Thursday, like she felt like me, but the

(23:46):
now she's there, or Katie or Mika or Taranta Brooke
like they were fetal, they were worried, they didn't have
any money, they were worried about reputation. They are all
of these things that you consider when you've been fined
and sort of like, wow, look at them now. But
that's entirely the point, so you're immediately you sort of
bolstered and inspired.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, there's a quote from Oprah that really stood out
to me when she's talking about how she was fired
from a TV job in Baltimore, and she said that
it was the first moment in her life when she
realized quote, something I had done was not good enough,
and therefore I wasn't good enough for me. That really
crystallizes the shame that we all feel when we go

(24:27):
through moments like this, when either could be your passover
for a promotion, it could be your demoted, or it
could be your lego.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, and you know, one thing that we really focused
on a lot to reassure women men anyone now is
work itself is no longer linear now, So now one
thing we really want to add every day, don't you
get a different push a lot about layoffs like Novo
ortice that just invented Mozempic just laid off nine thousand
people the other day Disney Paramount Dyson. When we were

(24:56):
writing the book, was laying off people so often now,
the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, the layoff
is not personal. So there's so much to do with
job loss now that is circumstantial and not personal. What
we're really urging women to do is number one, remember
your own value and you brought the value to the job,
not the other way around. And to look around, look

(25:17):
around where you are and look at the situation around you,
and there's millions of people in the same position as you,
and there's a community there if you want to find it,
and there is a beat even if. And again, different
financial circumstances give you different amounts of time, but you
always have some time to take a minute and think about.
And then one of the best pieces of advice in
the book is from Ron Lieber, who's the money columnist

(25:39):
from New York Times, and he said, take a minute
to think about what made you more happy and less
happy over the course of your career. What can you
do to increase the happiness and decrease the unhappiness. So
from like an Oprah situation where it was personal and
there was all of these overtones to that place, so
unhealthy racism, middle aged boys club stuff, all that stuff

(26:01):
she had to deal with, And the beautiful twist of
fate with Oprah is a year later, the new manager
comes up to her and says, let's start a talk show,
what do you Reckon? And the rest is history. So
you know, Fade intervene and her skills were still recognized,
and so now you know the TV network can be
YouTube can be, podcasts can be subseeck can be TikTok
can be, making cookies can be all of these different

(26:22):
things that are out there in the workplace. It is
so much more dominated by the individual now and it's
there for you again. But you've got to let yourself
see it, and sometimes being fired shocks you into that.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Absolutely. We've got to take a short break. We'll be
right back with Laura Brown and Christina O'Neil and we're back. Well,
I want to dive deeper into the cool girl's guide
to being fired. So Christina, let's say it happens right,
you get that call you've been fired. What is the

(26:55):
first step that cool girl should take?

Speaker 3 (26:57):
After that happens, Laura said about taking that minute, taking
a beat is really crucial. But I think the instinct
is you open up your bank account app and you
like refresh immediately and start doing your board of Okay,
the money, the healthcare, the opportunities that are going to
pop up, so getting your plan in place, you know,

(27:21):
kind of figuring out where to go from there.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
A big part of your work in this book is
encouraging women to take control of the narrative after you've
been fired, and Laura, I know that that was big
for you, just being really honest with both with yourself
and with the world about what happened, instead of hiding
behind some sort of euphemism like I left. Why was

(27:45):
that important to own it in that moment and what
did that do for you?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Christine? I come from an industry that is ducks on
a pond. My life's fabulous, you know, da da da da.
It's so judge and appearances, And we come from an
industry it's literally in fashion judges you and where you sit,
like at a fashion show. It is like the everest
of that kind of keeping up appearances. So I think
it made us even more stubborn you know, it's almost

(28:09):
punk because we're surrounded by women who we know God fight,
I left, I chose, I stepped down, I stepped away.
We're like, honey, you got fired. It's okay. And frankly,
for us, there's ego in it because we know we're good.
We know we're bloody good at our jobs. We got
fired because the circumstances that we can't control. And that's okay.

(28:32):
And I would wager in so many businesses where again
thousands of people are losing their jobs these days, it's
not because you're not good, you know what I mean,
And don't forget that you're good.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
It's also hard if you're carrying the lie, then how
are you telling people that you need a job or
you're ready to, you know, kind of explore something that's
a different path. And so that's why we really advocate
for the honesty, the sooner that you can own it
and get on with it. I'm not saying you're going
to get over it in a day, but you can

(29:03):
get on with it, and that you can then start
to sort of build what comes next.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Well, looking back over the ups and downs of my
own career, I am so grateful for those ego deaths
that I experienced, because I enjoyed the most tremendous rebirths
on the other side of that, And I think that
is the bright side of what you're writing about here.
It can be hard to see the light at the
end of the tunnel when a job ends unexpectedly, but

(29:32):
there's so much goodness to come. So, Christina, was there
a moment when you specifically realized, oh wait, this isn't
the end, this is actually the beginning.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Absolutely, it sounds so annoying to hear it. This is
going to be the best thing that ever happened to you.
Uh Like, in the moment, that is the last thing
you want to say to someone who's been fired. You know.
We hope that our book has enough of those types
of stories that people can kind of puzzle it together
for them without someone having to sit there and be like,

(30:02):
you're going to look back on this one day but
inevitably two and a half years later, which is where
I now sit. It was the best thing that ever
happened to me. And how I got there was by
owning it, by taking every single call and meeting. You know,
I work for an auction house. Now I work at Sotheby's.
And you know, if you had told me three years

(30:23):
ago that I was going to work in an auction house,
that would have never been the thing on the vision board.
But because I was forced to open myself up to
conversations and opportunities, you know, I am where I am now.
And the last sort of like Cherry on top right,
is that Laura and I were able to sort of
see a conversation in a community around what we were

(30:45):
personally going through and able to sort of, you know,
that entrepreneurial spirit that we've always sort of had, you know,
has translated into this book, and you know, we'll see
where it goes from here.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
What I'm struck by throughout our conversation is both the
bond that you two have and the bond that I
have with my female friends that I've rose up through
the chinches with. And I think there's a real opportunity
here not just to reflect on our own experiences with firing,
but to think about how we can support other cool
girls during their transition. Laura, what would be your word

(31:20):
for someone who has a friend who is going through
this right now? How can we be supportive of other
cool girls? Will get fired.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Call your friends, you know, call your friends, text your friend.
Don't worry about not knowing what to say. You can
just go this sucks because I found that again so
reassuring on that day when I couldn't get off the
bed because all the messages were coming in. Just be
around for them. You may not be able to get
them hired, you may not have financial IMSS, you may
have any of that, but your a friend. I'll go
buy you a drink. Here's a bottle of wine. You

(31:48):
want to drown your sorrows for a minute, I'm here.
If you want to just be alone, I'm here as well.
I think that's the thing, because the worst feeling that
can come when you've been fired is feeling alone. And
so anything you can do to make your friend feel
less isolated. They mightn't want to go out, they might
want to sit at home many Chinese for a week,
and that's okay. Anything you can to not make your

(32:10):
friend feel isolated. Just get on the phone.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
I like that you said get on the phone because
I miss calls. I miss phone calls, I miss chatting
with friends. And listen, there are some life transitions that
warn't a phone call. The text is just not going
to cut it.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
And whichever way you do it, even if it's like
I'm here if you need me, you know what I mean,
Because sometimes also you don't feel like rehashing it, so
it's also sort of reading the room for your friend
and be like, you know, okay, thank you God, I'm
just gonna sit with it for a minute, you know
what I mean. It's the knowing that you've got people
there that's the greatest comfort while you're sort of like
a beadle on its back, you know, before you can

(32:43):
turn yourself over a little bit and get on with it.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Well, as we wrap up this conversation, I would love
to I don't always do this, but I would love
to give both of you the floor if there's anything
that you would like to add.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
I have my favorite analogy show I do it. It
really is my favorite. Say if you're in a long
standing job, or any job to which you attached for
a long time, and you go to that job every day,
and that job is like a sandpit, you know, and
you go to the sandpit every day, and you know
the sandpit, you know everybody in the sandpit, and you're like, hi, Jenny, Hi, Hi, Johnny.
You know, every day, repeat, repeat, Hi Jenny, y Johnny.

(33:16):
It's a safe sand pit. It's fine. It's by maybe
one day of dog poops in it, you're like, oh, hi, Jenny,
Hi Johnny. You know you just because it's familiar. It's familiar.
You go to the sandpit, you go to the sandpit.
You're going to send it. Then one day you get fired,
and then you're like, there was a beach there. The
entire time, I've been spending my time in this progressively

(33:36):
more stinky sandpit. And it's just you tend to blinker yourself,
you know, we all do in our workplace. And sometimes
you've got to be shocked into the wider world. And
while it feels tough, again, we promise there's everyone there
for you. This book is there for you to rebuild
yourself and have a much more fulfilling life than you

(33:57):
really ever thought you could.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Honestly, I just come back. You have to own what
happens to you, whether it's in firing or in other
corners of your life. And the more honest you are
with yourself and with your friends and your network, then
I honestly believe that then more sort of positive things
and more good comes of being able to live your

(34:19):
life openly. So that's my number one piece of advice
is you don't need to carry the shame. Those days
are over and there's a community out there if you're
willing to just sort of pick your head up and
look for it exactly, and they're all on the beach.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Christina and Laura, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Thank you. Yeah, this was really really special.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
You're brilliant. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
The Right Side is a production of Hello Sunshine and
iHeart Podcasts and is executive produced by Reese Witherspoon and
me Simone Boyce. Production is by a Cast Creative Studios.
Our producers are Taylor Williamson, Adrian Bain, Abby Delk, and
Darby Masters. Our production assistant is Joya putnoy Acasts. Executive

(35:09):
producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rudder. Maureen Polo and
Ryese Witherspoon are the executive producers for Hello Sunshine. Ali
Perry and Lauren Hansen are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Our theme song is by Anna Stump and Hamilton Lighthouser.
Advertise With Us

Host

Simone Boyce

Simone Boyce

Popular Podcasts

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.