Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill Had the Coolest Jobs in Magazines - Then They Got Fired - No Filter

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mama Mayor acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Everyone says, you know what resource did you have when
you got fired?

Speaker 4 (00:23):
And I said I had Laura Brown.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
You know, I texted her under the table while I
was being told I was being fired and I said, hey,
call me when you wake up getting the boot.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
Have you ever been fired sacked given the old boot
up the ass? Well, I have, strangely not in all
my years in radio where that's supposed to happen regularly,
But only a couple of months ago when a show
I was doing called The Project got axed and it

(01:01):
was really foundationally shocking in lots of ways. Maybe not huge,
but everything in you has to kind of recalibrate. And
I wasn't even doing the project full time. I was
there once a week, and to have lost that has
ripple in the pond effects upon me even now. So

(01:27):
today's guests, who were two of the most respected, admired
and stylish women in modern publishing, Laura Brown and Christina O'Neill.
For them to have written a book after spending decades
shaping the worlds of media, fashion and pop culture, and
to have written a book about being fired is quite incredible.

(01:48):
When the so called dream job turned into a nightmare,
both of them were unceremoniously fired, and they were both
at the top of their game. Getting fired isn't.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Just career ending.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
It can feel traumatizing and shameful. It strips away not
just your job title, but often your sense of identity
and your friendships. And yet, instead of disappearing, Laura and
Christina teamed up and together they wrote the best selling
memoir manifesto, All the Cool Girls Get Fired are funny,

(02:29):
painfully honest, and surprisingly empowering book about success, failure, and
starting over. It's part memoir, is part manifesto, and part
group therapy for anyone who's ever tied their own self
worth to their job title and lost both. In this conversation,
Laura and Christina pulled back the velvet curtain on fame, fashion,

(02:55):
and the cult of success. We talk about the fantasy
and fallout of dream jobs, the wisdom that comes from
losing everything, and why sometimes the best thing that can
happen to your career and your life is getting fired.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Christina O'Neil, Laura Brown welcome to No Filter.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I was in bed with you last night.

Speaker 5 (03:20):
I was in bed with your book All the Cool
good Bye. You were so good that I had to
keep taking screenshots of what was going on and sending
them to girlfriends because it was Yes, that's the highest
it actually is. So the book is.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
All the cool girls get fired. See, yeah, you have
our own march.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:45):
Because the I mean, it's a product very much of
the times, very much, and I think to a certain extent,
the whole world is like the people of the world
are like the frogs in boiling water. So it kind
of started, ah, this is great, splashing around whatever. Now
things are boiling. Things are boiling, but we haven't kind

(04:07):
of noticed it. Just when I reading your book, I
was reflecting on the people that I knew, people who
were great at what they do, who have been fired
in the.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Last growing number of them.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yes, yes, And then I realized, for.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Two years since we set out to write this book,
the landscape has shifted so dramatically.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It really is.

Speaker 5 (04:31):
And I realized, far from reading it just as like
a spectator, I went hang on. I was working on
a TV show that got axed in August.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Hang on, that's also me when you were call.

Speaker 5 (04:50):
Well, I am now, I am now because I've been fired.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
It's a situational thing. Yeah, we started, you know, we
both got hit canned, you know, a year apart, twenty
twenty two and twenty twenty three, and we were obviously
speaking from our own experience and our experience being in
the media, and media was kind of the the tip
of the spear, you know for so many of these
of these layoffs and the sort of microcosm of all
of these things that have since infected so many other

(05:19):
different industries, industries born from either tech you know, AI,
and of all the change there and especially in the
United States, the change of administration, all the job loss
that's happened here, and it is just an absolute tsunami
of job loss born from all of this change. And
we could never have conceived that in the two years

(05:39):
since we started this process that it would be the
volume would be where it is today. And it's not
it's not personal. That's the thing. There's so many people
getting fired, there's so many people getting laid off, there's
so much change. This is the biggest message of the
book is that I don't take it personally because it's
not about you more like ninety five percent of the
time these days.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
Well, I know that neither of you have to establish
your credentials as far as as far as being brilliant goes.
And both of you were editors in chief, like really
at the top of your game, Like you would think
that if anyone was fireproof, it would be you two.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
And yet not.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
And Christina, you were Wall Street Journal, the magazine height
of lux, really editor in chief. You had been friends
with Laura, acquaintances or friends since.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
You arrived in New York, and you met at a.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
Mark Jacob's show Laura the week of September eleven, Yes,
September tenth.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, so that was, you know, twenty four years ago now,
and we were acquaintances at first, obviously casually meeting, you know,
the night before the world changed, but became you know,
close confidence and comrades at Harper's Bazaar, where we worked
alongside each other for eight years until I went to

(07:03):
the Journal, and not long after Laura went to In Style.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
What did you do at Harper's and what was Laura doing?

Speaker 3 (07:09):
I was at Harper's Bazar for twelve years, so I
grew through the ranks. I started out as a fashion
features writer, which is the sort of lowest role in
the fashion features department, and I rose to the number
two position during my tenure. I was the executive editor
by the time I left.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
And I started in a features more of a features role,
so there was fashion features and features basically. I think
my first role was some a very odd American term
called articles editor, and I was like, do I just
edit articles? Okay? And and then sort of faintly masochistically,
took on a lot of the celebrity booking and the covers.
And so when I was there towards my I was
there eleven years I went out. My last title there

(07:51):
was executive editor Special Projects. So it was that sort
of sphere, but more a lot of the jazz handing
and creative stuff, a lot of the sort of circ
us ale a.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
Magazine, Yeah, right, with Innate or without Innate, oh without.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Your your net grows, as you know, as obviously your
experience grows, and your fears of size because it's very
it's very intimidating, you know, starting in a role like that,
and especially dealing with famous people and you know, powerful
designers and publicists and all of these sort of great
power wielders with whom you become more familiar, and so
you know, you end up building your own net.

Speaker 5 (08:33):
And you had arrived, Laura in that in that fateful
week in two thousand and one, just as a cheek
from Sydney.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Big dreams, babe, yeah, ex dreams. Yeah, I had what
I bought two bags and a dream, two bags and
one and a half friends, yes, and five grand yes?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
And what was your plan?

Speaker 1 (08:56):
My plan was? And I think, look, I mean, you know,
we're all, you know, similar sort of generations. I think that,
you know, especially in Australia, we grew up without the Internet.
We grew up without all of these things that teenagers
and young adults have now. So we all can still
mythologized fashion and all of those things, but we didn't
have all the access to it that you do now.
So I was obsessed with magazines, so as Christina. You know,

(09:17):
we both grew up as teenagers obsessed with that. But
we but we had the tyranny of distance, you know,
we were far away, and so for me, I was
just desperate too. I was like, if I'm going to
work in magazines, I need to work in the center
of magazines, and the center of magazines is New York City.
So I'm going to save up my money and get
my little Lisa and show up and work it out.
And it was that sort of guileless is what's very aussy,

(09:41):
you know, it's like, okay, I get it go and
showed up and obviously we met on this particular evening,
and then September eleventh happened, and it was the next
the next the next night, next day, next morning, next morning.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, we woke up to a totally different world.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Obviously. Look, we were lucky to we didn't lose you know,
friends or family, and we were okay. But it was
a shock that you know, the city and the whole
country dealt with for a long time. So I didn't
I did freelancing, and I think my first my first
job probably came first role was like the next January
when I actually got a job at Talk magazine, which
is again a crazy time capsule. That's Tina Brown and

(10:20):
Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 6 (10:21):
So I've heard of him, Yeah, yeah, he tends to
pop up generally in a courtroom.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
But yeah, exactly. But it was a long time ago
and a lot's changed.

Speaker 5 (10:35):
Well, so much changed, but in that time both of
you were on a trajectory that was upwards, a testament to.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Working hard.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Hustle.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, hussle, hussle in the city that never sleeps.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah, and you really do need to sleep, doc I'll
tell you that. No, we were really excited to be here,
and we sort of joke in the book that we
we we really considered Sex and the City to be
a documentary. You know, we we loved all that, we
were emanticize it so much, and we were of that age.
I mean, I was twenty seven when I arrived at
Christina's too, missage twenty five, where you are just running

(11:11):
and you're so upciting, You're three things in a night.
You don't want to miss anything, and you want to
get up and you want to do it again. And
the beauty of living in New York is at the
beginning of the week, you never know how it's going
to end. You never know who you're going to meet
and what experience you're going to have, and that's really hypnotic.
And so we did this for a really long time,
and it did because also we could acquit ourselves and
we were good at what we did. We were enthusiastic

(11:33):
about it, and we could do the job well. So
in a reasonable world, you should, you know, ascend to
a higher role if you do a good job.

Speaker 5 (11:41):
Well, of course, and you were both doing not a
good job. You were both doing great jobs, and you
were doing them greatly. Okay, Well, I mean iconic covers,
you know, in style and Christina wsj amazing, thank you.
But the icy waters started to lap at your feet.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
In retro select, well, in retrospect.

Speaker 5 (12:08):
You can things become so much more obvious than they
are at the time, respectively. When did you start to
realize because it happened for you first, Laura, that me
that the long knives were coming, the.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Long knives in the icy water. Get out.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
All you need is Rihanna with a shark.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
This is advanced, thank you, This is advanced pirate pirating here.
I think that you know, when even when I was
hired as editor in chief Events, it was certainly where
those heady days of those literary days of betitor in
chief roles in town cars and everything were no longer
even when I started. And so that was twenty sixteen,

(12:57):
and you know, there was the first trump administration and
then you know, we're pretty soon that, you know, in
twenty twenty it was COVID and all of this kind
of you know, real headwinds. And at the same time,
in my time in Style, which was about five and
a half years, I worked for three different publishers, so
Time Inc. Who hired me, died pretty soon after the
Emeritive Corporation took over, and then we were bought by

(13:20):
a company called dot Dash in late twenty twenty one.
So there was so much change in legacy media. The
economy was challenged. You know, digital was threatening everything, Social
media was threatening, everything advertising was down. All of these
things that have powered you know, businesses like Mamma Mia
and all the things that we embraced now are the
things that actually threatened the traditional you know, media landscape.

(13:43):
I certainly saw that I understood the Internet. You know,
we existed in that sphere, but it depended on how
each each company was going to approach it and what
their investment would be and what their belief was. And
for us, I was you know, I was happy there.
I did great work there. I did some of our
best work during COVID because the stakes were really high

(14:03):
and we wanted to be include people and make them
feel seen and cared for during and stimulated during such
a challenging time. But at the same time, towards the
end of my five is years, I was a little
bit like I caught like a dog with a head
out the window. I was a bit like, I kind
of want to do my own thing eventually, and I'd
be like like this and I'm my managing it. It would

(14:24):
be like we don't have a budget, and oh and
I was a little bit you know, on like out there.
But I certainly did not expect that we would all
be let go, probably a good ten months a year
before I'd even thought about leaving. So even though I'd
certainly read the room and thankfully had enough kind of

(14:46):
mojo out there as Laura Brown or as I'll be
you know, to I think insure myself, it was still
it was it was still a shock.

Speaker 5 (14:56):
Terrible, like devastading, devastating. And it's it's interesting wild because
the book helps you process so much of being let go,
from that initial stomach dropping, like life totally exploding moment

(15:19):
really of when you're released from everything that you knew
and that you've committed so much of your life too.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, and Christina was you know, very established in her
she was, Yes, she could have been saying.

Speaker 5 (15:33):
There, So Christina, you thought that you had the job
that you would love forever.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
I had.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
There was no head out the window in my scenario.
In fact, you know, the journal was in a in
a really you know, it was going from strength to strength.
The newspaper had added a ton of subscriptions during COVID,
during the first you know, Trump one, things were you know,
I had consolidated a lot in the luxury you know

(16:02):
industry and luxury market where you know, to be a
part of a newspaper, you know, and that sort of
you know, qualified audience became you know, increasingly the place
where advertisers wanted to you know, spend their spend their dollars.
So the magazine, you know, during my tenure had just

(16:24):
grown and become incredibly, incredibly profitable. So you know, while
that's happening, you know, what I don't know, and what
I'm not privy to, is what was happening at the top.
And there was a regime change on the newspaper. There
was a new editor who was brought in in December,

(16:45):
and you know when she started. You know, there was
a period you know, every editor sort of given a
grace period. I'm over here running a you know, sort
of secondary product for the business. I'm not core to
you know, the news mission.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
In a way that you know.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
I sort of justified the fact that we weren't engaging initially,
you know, you.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Know, new editing it.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
So I was sort of like, I'm not a high priority,
like wherever you're making money, everything's going well, like you know,
I'm not going to take any of this personally. Well,
the longer the sort of you know, this is the hindsight, right,
the longer the you know it took for that meeting
to lock in, for me to finally kind of connect
with her and you know introduce myself properly and kind

(17:35):
of get into you know, the hopes and dreams and
ambitions you know that we had for the for the magazine.
You know, as that kept getting they can get kept
getting kicked down the road.

Speaker 5 (17:47):
You know, when we finally you couldn't get a meeting,
You couldn't get a meeting.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Couldn't get a meeting, had a meeting, you know, travel
dates changed, you know, priorities, you know, there were you
know a lot of things. You know, in the newsroom
there there's a lot that goes on in a single day,
let alone, you know, the start of a new editor's tenure.
So I sort of explained, you know, I was not

(18:12):
hung up on this, you know, obviously hindsight's twenty twenty.
But I sort of took it all to me and like,
keep your head down and keep doing a good job.
And so when we finally had our first meeting, the
meeting had been scheduled to be in her office and
it was changed to the HR conference room about seven

(18:35):
minutes before.

Speaker 5 (18:38):
No one ever wants to No one ever wants their
meeting b in the HR office.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Yeah, speaking of the cam.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
Yes, so Christine, Yeah, yeah, you knew so, Christina, but
yours had happened.

Speaker 2 (18:53):
And this is your.

Speaker 5 (18:54):
Very good fortune. You're very good fortune to be friends
with Laura Brown, who had the bad fortune to be
sacked a.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Year before you. Exactly.

Speaker 5 (19:04):
But that's amazing, wasn't it. First you were the first call.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Everyone says, you know, what resource did you have when
you got fired?

Speaker 4 (19:12):
And I said, I had Laura Brown.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
You know, I texted her under the table while I
was being told.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
I was being fired.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Really, what did you say?

Speaker 4 (19:22):
Well, I knew she was traveling.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
She was actually in South Africa, of all places. And
I said, hey, call me when you wake up getting
the boots.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
And I was like, I think I just was woken
up the moment, the night of them, and I went, oh,
but it was just like it was so present tense,
and I was like, okay, well i'll call it tomorrow.
And yeah, I think that there was some I think
I was, you know, And actually some of Christina's friends
laughed kind of long and loud that I was first,

(19:53):
because at least we had helped her, you know, and
I was like, I was sort of further.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Up the trailblazer.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, well what a pioneer.

Speaker 5 (20:02):
And no one wants to be the first pancake, but
you were the first pancake.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Now I was the first. I was a bit crispy,
but I was, you know, further up the road and
had a flashlight, you know, and I sort of light
the way, and I was, dare say, doing great? Good?
If not, if not better? I was certainly there's a
little brickety obviously when you're starting something on your own,
but you have so much more control and and the
joy you feel when your fate isn't controlled by these

(20:27):
sort of grover lords as I as I would call them,
you know. And and so I was just Christina, and
I was I mean, I feel like I was, but
I was just happier.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
When she got back, she said, let's go out and celebrate.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
Celebrate, you know. But Laura already had.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
The perspective that I think so many people, you know,
lack in the instant this happens. And and you know,
obviously this is so much of the message in the
book is the minute something like this happens to you,
you are panicking, You.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
Are freaking out.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
There is no clarity, there's no silver lining, you know,
there's no joking about celebrating in the moment.

Speaker 4 (21:07):
And this is the book that.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
You know, you sort of wish that HR pushed at
you along with that packet of paper, because I think
it does give the silver lining.

Speaker 5 (21:20):
More with the authors of All the Cool Girls Get Fired,
Laura Brown and Christina O'Neil, after this short break, make
sure you stay with us in that moment, Laura, So
you already so when Christina got the boot, you could
already message her and say, let's celebrate because you knew
that this would be a time of freedom.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
For me to celebration part of it. I think that
fashion is a very ritualistic based industry, and it's very
status based industry, so very obvious, you know, And I
think if you do that for too long, you can
get a bit whatsoever, not Stockholm, but not that extreme,
you know, you can get a bit institutionalized to it,

(22:06):
and it becomes what you think your life is. Christine
has always been pragmatic and she's always had a solid
sense of herself. But there's always that risk and I
think that sometimes and after having been like tipped out
of a nesta as I was, I could see that
it would be good for her, you know, psychologically in
the end. It wasn't going to feel good for her

(22:27):
in that first week. It wasn't going to feel good
for in the first three years, yes, but it was
she was going to get to that point, you know,
where she turned that corner. I was like, oh, well,
thank god that happened, because it opened up a breadth
of opportunity that she hadn't seen before.

Speaker 5 (22:41):
So Laura, in your case, you didn't have a Laura.
So what was the gag?

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I this one.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
You only had this one, and this.

Speaker 5 (22:49):
One's pretty good, but this one, I think it had
not the stuffing out of you for how long?

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I mean, I've got to say, like, there's a couple
of things that I think I had a certain level
of insurance. I think the biggest part, you know, some
of the biggest trauma about losing a job. It's like
a breakup. It is it is it's a routine and
a ritual that you were used to having and it's
taken away from you. So it depends on how much
you attached to that number one, and how much of

(23:20):
yourself you insert into that, and how much of your
value you gather from that. And I loved it, and
of course I enjoyed going to fashion shows and sitting
in the front row and all that kind of stuff.
But there was a there was a good, decent part
of me, and it could be the Aussie part, could
be any of that that I had a foot out
always and I had you know, I existed as myself
in social media. So as much as it would be

(23:41):
like here I am at the door show would also
be like here I am with the Koala, and so
I sort of tacitly understood that that was my insurance.
So I had that going on, which I think saved
me mentally in a pretty respectable way. And also I
was I was getting married two months later, and that
was I was lucky for that, even though I was like,

(24:01):
how the hell I'm going to pay for this because
there's no more money coming. It was a pretty big distraction.
And so it was like I was a bit like, Okay,
this is February, getting married in April, and was the
first time people would ever really be together after all
the COVID that the Aussies had finally gotten sprung, you know,
And so I could just be a bit like, buther it,
I'll go and I'll go and have some lunches and
everything else. But I knew I didn't want to work

(24:23):
in magazines again, so I was very clear on that too.
So I was like, let's just go and do this,
and let's have enough of a runway, enough savings, enough
stuff that I can just kind of sit with it
and see who comes calling this way rather than the
other way. Because I think I'd made a couple of
some decisions and some sort of gain. I'd bought myself

(24:43):
some insurance that I knew I would be okay as myself.
So yeah, but there is of course there's fomo. There's fomo.
The first first time the fashion shows come around and
it's not like a key part of your job anymore,
so you sort of make these decisions and I sort
of call it proof of life, but proof of life.
But Chrisnia and I do did visit it. Say we

(25:04):
did this in our own way. It was like, hey,
we would show up to things.

Speaker 5 (25:08):
Did you am I in remembering that you Laura went
to a fashion show the day after.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
I sure did.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, right, I went to.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
A day after and I was like the coolest show
in New York. It was the Pruensis Schooler Show. And
it was very I mean I was in shock for sure.
It was very deliberate. It was like I've earned the
right to be in this room, you know, and just
because I've got a punk now I think about it,
but it was I've worked a long time and my

(25:37):
value has not gone away because of my job's gone.
And so I showed up with this thing and I
was like, people like, oh, wow, longer that sucks. I
was like, yeah, shit, can you believe it? I'm like
hugging people. I might have had a wine before I went, probably,
but you know, and because I was like, I had
every right to be there, and then I went and
did that and it was a very sort of public
show of like, you know what, f them, I deserve

(25:58):
this and I'm a functioning person. And then I kind
of pieced out for a while and you know, and
and retreated. Christina went to a big party. And again
this is our very industry based stuff. Not everyone is
going to go to fashion show or a big party.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Often an equivalent, there's an equivalent.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
Guard your Starbucks place where everybody gets drinks after the
or the conference that you can go to. I was
just reading about right now the fashion Sorry. The film
critic from Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson, got laid off just
a couple of weeks ago, and he took himself and
it was in shock. But he's a brilliant writer and
he's such a good critic, and he posted on Instagram

(26:36):
and said, you know, I just took myself to RUnni
Film Festival on my own because I can. And I
thought that was an amazing decision. And it depends on
what your profession is and what the visible parts are
that you participate in and what your currency is. But
don't forget that.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
You have all right, So this is quite brilliant, but
I think a lot of people listening to this will go,
I feel too ashamed.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Well, we've got a book for you, and so she
can take it for once because I'm always yapping about it.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
No, I mean you say that the first The first
point of getting over that feeling is to own it.
You must identify what happened to you. You must put
a name on it, and then you have to tell people.
You have to talk about it. And that starts by
telling yourself, by being honest with yourself about what happened

(27:31):
in that room.

Speaker 5 (27:31):
An interesting phenomenon hr lead. I think I don't understand
why is often encouraging people to change the narrative of
what happened. It happens in radio my profession all the time,
where they'll be like, oh, yeah, we'll just follow your narrative.
You will just say, you know, whatever you want to say,

(27:55):
but both of you exactly what happened to Yeah, so
you were really and.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
The narrative, like the narrative is why would I ever
leave my dream job?

Speaker 3 (28:04):
So I knew in that room when I was being
told that there was no way I could go down
and look my team in the eye and pretend like
I was walking out of the door on my own,
you know, volition. So that was really important to me
that the company owned it, because why should they get

(28:25):
to cover, you know, change the sort of what do.

Speaker 5 (28:29):
You think is the reason that they that they want
to say that.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
I think I think it's given you the dignity to
sort of like not have to, you know, but we
want to stop there's no shame in being fired. What
thing is it's almost like a rite of passage. Now
we know hundreds, like hundreds and hundreds thousands of people
are being you know, let go daily, and I think

(28:56):
this sooner as a society we stop the obfuscation of
it and we start acknowledging that in ninety nine percent
of the cases, these are you know, for people aren't
being fired for cause. They're being fired because the the
you know, things are all they're shaking things are you know,

(29:19):
we're in at a time for for better or for worse.
We're in a revolutionary moment of technology and you know,
all of these you know, forces are at play that
people don't have control over. So the one thing you
can control is how you walk out of that room
and how you.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Feel and the truth.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
And what you also can control is is shame is
a choice. And actually people who are out and about
who talk about you for you know, half an hour
or a day, whatever they can. We have this great
banker and who we interview in the book, Sally korche
WCAU's been fired twice super publicly, and and she was like, yeah,
people might talk about you for a day, they might
text about you for a little bit, but you know what,
they don't care. If people care about themselves, nobody cares,

(30:00):
and and and it was it's very a jarring, a
jarring idea. But the thing is we sort of compare.
I think obviously we say all the cool girls get fired.
This applies to everybody, but particularly, you know, women in
the workforce. Sometimes, especially when you mentioned like, oh, I'm
too ashamed to talk about that. Shame is like a
big kettlebell, you know that you pick up that A
lot of women pick up and go, oh, it's going

(30:20):
to carry this around? No one asks them too, and
it's really heavy and it feels like shit. So what
you don't need to do that, and so what we
want to remove is this sort of self imposed shame
that so many people who lose a job have put
on themselves and revolutionize that and be like, yeah, yeah,
I got canned. And also like there's a confidence in

(30:42):
saying that you got fired that is really subversive. You know,
this whole concept of this book is because Christina and
I knew we're really bloody good at what we did,
and we still are, and we got fired because of
X and Y, you know, and Z reasons. And I
think that it's people reconciling the fact that, you know,
oftentimes what happens in your workplace is beyond your control,

(31:03):
but what you do have control of is how you
see it, how you projected, and what you choose to
do and explore after it.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
You know, you said particularly women in the book.

Speaker 5 (31:13):
Someone says, I should remember who said this, but it's
so interesting. Boys are taught to be brave and girls
are taught to be perfect.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
It seems that that's in Sally's chapter.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
It's amazing, it resonates.

Speaker 5 (31:30):
And I think that that informs that feeling of shame.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, oh I failed, I failed something, and you know,
and there was something as well that we We talked
to a really brilliant HR expert called Bucki Katie who
we've known for a long time. She's in media for
a long time, and or of Quizzic call it. Why
do you think, you know women take this so hard
and why do you think this shame exists? And she said,
it's because it actually took us so much longer to

(31:57):
get there of it. Men, it generationally took us so
much longer. We've only had a vote for one hundred.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
And we didn't get longer.

Speaker 5 (32:03):
We didn't get we didn't get much time at the pinnacle,
did we before the next lot of climbers were coming
up to chop the flag down?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (32:13):
And I think that that's so if you're knocked off
that perch that you've been scuttling so for so long
and hard in the employment market to achieve, it does
hit you harder. But one of the grace notes of
what's going on now in the employment market, and a
grace note of the book, is that work itself is
no longer linear. The corner office need not be the

(32:35):
goal anymore. So many of the things that we were
taught to prize growing up in media or whatever, industry
have kind of broadened into this sort of individual based
currency of where work can be. You can bake cookies
and sell them on TikTok. You know, there's so many
different ways, and especially in our business media, you look

(32:57):
at legacy journalists who are on substate YouTube selling podcasts.
There's just all of these worlds to explore that didn't
exist before. And it is scary because a lot of
those worlds are the ones, and especially in our case
that got rid of bout jobs. You know, we lost
our jobs, our traditional jobs because of this this wave
of different ways of working. But if you actually open

(33:18):
your eyes and give yourself a beat, and obviously, depending
on your financial circumstance, you have a shorter or longer time,
all of that, you know is is relevant. But if
you actually kind of get up off the couch after wallowing,
which we fully encourage you do, you know that you
look around from your sand pitt and you will actually

(33:38):
notice there's a big old beach there if you let
yourself see it.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
And at some point you have to teach yourself to swim.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
You do, or just sit there with some binoculars on
you see the horizon. You know, you know, look at
the horizon you didn't you didn't see for such a
long time.

Speaker 5 (33:55):
Because one of the things I imagine that that that
you must have mourned for whatever period of time was
and it's hard not to be seduced by this is
the affirmation, the external affirmation of the world. How do
you process when that is suddenly yanked away? And whether

(34:16):
that's your name on the door or celebrities that know you,
or the front row at at fashion wake, how do
you How long is that graving process?

Speaker 3 (34:27):
I found it really cathartic to write down all the
things I was really proud of that we had achieved
during my tenure. And Laura and I've been talking a
lot about this sort of like concept of pride, and
that's another thing that a lot of people don't kind
of show up with that first, right, you know, it's
perceived as maybe over confidence, ego whatever. I found it

(34:51):
really cathartic in real time to sit there and write
down all of the things.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
That we achieved.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
No one can take those successes away, and I wanted
to remind myself how much we had, you know, achieved
in a decade. And also I wanted to have that
as a sort of you know, reminder to the team
when I was leaving, you know, all all of this was,

(35:18):
you know, we did this, we did this together. And
so that was something that I found helpful in terms
of like processing what was going on, because I think
it is really easy to just sort of, you know,
be bitter and be upset and you know, be angry.
And if you can identify a little bit of glimmer

(35:40):
of pride and things to kind of acknowledge you know
that you achieved, I think you will feel like, oh, hey, wait,
I did that. That means I can go and do
this again for someone else in a different way. And
you know, obviously you know it's going to you know,
could take on a different shape or form. But that

(36:01):
I think that reminder is something that no one can
take away. No one can take that list away from you.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
And you're also reminded by the sective literally people showing
up for you if you've been a good person, you've
done good work, they don't disappear. They do show up
for you. And a key example is, you know a book.
We're very lucky to have Oprah Winfrey in the book,
and we had I'd worked got a couple of times
Christina had worked with her with her once and and
she my husband sort of calls it Johnny apple seed.

(36:27):
You know, like you're going through your career and you
don't know it necessarily, but you're kind of flinging these
seeds around of relationships and bonds and work and stuff
and sort of value you create. And then if something
like this happens, you can look around and see that
those seeds have grown. And Oprah, you know, said yes
to being in our book because she enjoyed conversations she'd

(36:48):
had with me for interview. She enjoyed her shoots with
you know, her shoot with WSJ, and and she liked
us and and and that's that's a reminder too, during
this sort of grieving process of what, oh, I've lost
it all. No one's going to call me I'm a loser,
I'm alone. You know who's going to bother with me?
The right ones do, and the right ones remember, and
the right ones help and and you and they remember

(37:11):
your value. And so that again, that's another choice you
have to make. But you have to get out there
a little bit, and you have to talk to people,
and you have to be honest, because if you're not honest,
people aren't going to know that you need, you know,
a connection or a help or some work. So that's
you know, we found that hugely atifying, you know, all
of those people that showed up for us, because because

(37:32):
we've done well and treated people well over the course
of our career. And that goes the same for if
you work in a doctor's office or a Starbucks or
the fashion business, the same deal.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
Yes, if people like you, they like you, and people
want to help people they like. However, one of the
things that you must have lost, both of you, for
instance in the Oprah example, is how do you then
what is your mode of communication? Because previously you both
would have had it through your jobs.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
How are you reaching out now? Personally? You kept your
contact leading.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
We've been doing this for a while for a while, honey,
you know, so we you know, there's people that have
also been in this business for a long time, so
there's people that you've just known. And yeah, I mean
we have certainly had a platform for our ideas that
was bigger than us. You know that we you know,
we put out a magazine and have an image of
X or Y on the cover, and we'd have a
fashion shoot, we'd have advertising and all that kind of stuff,

(38:29):
but you know, those relationships you forged over all those
years don't really go away. So we found I think
when we both got sacked, we had a real sort
of deluge of people reaching out to us. And even
if we maybe hadn't saved their contact, you can find
people on Instagram, You've got their cell phone numbers. There's
always someone you can ask, where you can where you
can find someone that you might need to talk to.

(38:50):
We didn't really have an issue with knowing how to
get to people. It was like, Okay, what do we
want to ask and who do we want to be
and do we want to take a beat? And it
was different for both of us. Christina really kind of
got out there again pretty pretty quickly and fired all
of that up, and I didn't, you know, So, I
think it depends on what you wanted in your comfort level.

Speaker 5 (39:09):
It's interesting because I think a lot of people would
think about the fashion world that it's shallow, that it's
very currency oriented.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 5 (39:24):
Like that, what's your social currency? What's your status? So
what you two were doing was having had all the
external status removed, you're just like here we are, We're
the people that you've dealt with.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Will you come do this with us?

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Well, you find out who your real friends are and
who your work friends are, right, I mean, I think
that's one of the things that becomes clear, and that's
you know, a process that you have to go through.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
Like Laura said, we had a.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Reason to reach out to people, you know, and because
because of that, it was a great opportunity to re
engage with a lot of these contacts that we had
built and you know.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Saved over the years.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
I think with regards to the superficiality of the fashion industry,
you know, it feels a little like it's a little
bit easy to say to say that, you know, Laura
and I are I think proof of the opposite of
you know, you can make real friends and real connections
and you know, show up for people in ways that

(40:27):
you know you can do in many other industries as well.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
And they showed up for you.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah, but you don't have to buy in, you know,
you have to buy into like deliving your whole life
based on what seat you get at a fashion show,
Like that's that's not a full and balanced life. You know,
there are we see them all the time. We see
people that are brought into that and that becomes their
only currency. And if you do want to be like,
I'm relevant because I'm wearing a saline jacket that I
spent my rent on, then that's your choice, you know,

(40:53):
and I wouldn't recommend it. And so there's always there's
always people that fall for the currency of all their industries.
But yes, fashions is the most obvious. Fashions is the
tip of the spirit. Is where you're judged on where
you sit, you know, and you know if you if
you see around that and again if you have a
good record of work behind you. But you also go

(41:17):
we spend our time now we don't have to go
to every single fashion show. We go to the fashion
shows or the events or whatever. Where we're valued, where
our friends are, where we're taken care of, and that
is it should be exactly the same in any industry.
You know, if you're if you're trying to remain relevant
in business, whatever you work in, but you're going to
somewhere that makes you feel funny in the tummy, then don't.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Go, or go with someone or yeah, go with.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Some backup, or just know or just kind of edit, edit,
how much you're out there and how much you can
take and listen to yourself and now and and I
understand your comfort level. And sometimes you should force yourself
out there a little bit because you do need to
show that. But other times I feel crappy and I
don't want to I don't want to feel worse. And
that's okay too.

Speaker 5 (42:00):
You know you were talking earlier about allowing yourself a
little bit of time to wallow. I was struck in
the book by how little time time you set aside
for that, Whereas I would be like, I need at
least three months of shitting in the bed.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
You know. The thing is, I don't think you would
we've just met, but I know I can feel it already.
You'd be like, I feel bad. I feel bad, shiny shiny,
you know. And I think that especially, And I think
we're lucky in the media to a degree because we
have infl curiosity, you know. And I think that to
foster that in any any world, you're in to be

(42:41):
a bit like, oh I lost this, but look over there,
look at that thing that's glimmering in the distance, and
you just have to kind of remind yourself to look
at it and then it's pretty dazzling. What can do that?
But yeah, man, sit there and cry and drink or
whatever you're into for a little bit. You fully recommend that.
We fully did that.

Speaker 5 (43:02):
The rest of my conversation with Laura Brown and Christina
O'Neil after this break back in a tick. Christina, I
think you said that you went through in a very
methodical manner and prioritize the things that you were going
to need financially, things that you're going to have to
pay for both of your blondes.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Blonde blonde is expensive.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Natural, we don't pay.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
It's just like this, but you know what I mean.
Like so the reality in the book, which is a
really interesting to night jacket, No, that's right.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
Lots of other things did, but not the highlights.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
No.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
I mean I had to sit down and you know,
do that sort of boring you know, write down all
your expenses, print out all your credit card bills, really
go through everything with a fine tooth comb and and
make you know, tough decisions. So I absolutely went through
that process. But at the same time, it wasn't just

(44:05):
the financial motivation that got me back into the conversations
about what could come.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
You know, I, like Laura said.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
The sort of curiosity, the opportunities, you know, because a
lot of people reached out. I was taking a lot
of meetings, and I was having a lot of interesting
conversations and kind of, you know, one of those like
brilliant whiteboards where you're kind of like, Okay, I could
go over here and do this, or I could do this,
or like you know, you sort of start you have time.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
You have time.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
For the first time in my entire adult life, I
had time to sort of step back and say, am.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
I really doing what I love?

Speaker 3 (44:40):
And am I going to take a job that doesn't
let me have the time to do these other things
that I love? And I think that was the sort
of math. You know, someone in the book you Know
talks about sort of really sitting down and kind of
compiling your financial you know, responsibilities, but also your emotional responsibilities.

(45:02):
And you know, we call it math for your dreams.
But when you add the two together, if you are
able to kind of consider what comes next with with
those things being your guiding lights, it is a lot
easier to go into conversations and and you know, to
sort of be honest about what you need from an

(45:24):
agreement or what you need from a work you know,
contract or a work opportunity.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah, listen to you're in a child. Sometimes what makes
me feel good makes me feel lucky, you know it
sometimes can be can be that simple, and again you don't.
Everyone has varying amounts of time to spend to do that.
But you everyone has some time and that is something
that is given to you, whether or not you when

(45:49):
you get fired.

Speaker 5 (45:50):
Yes, well this is easy when you when you've fired,
you suddenly have a lot of time. But it's how
you choose to prioritize that time. And what it seems
like is there's a lot of admin and there's a
lot of really having to dig date to teach yourself
things that previously maybe when you're part of a team

(46:12):
that's someone else's domain. What was the hardest, Because Laura,
I cannot go through this whole conversation with you making
everything sounds so fucking easy.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
I'll tell you what's hard, and you're you guys are
blessed in Australia. You might have to deal with this
is healthcare?

Speaker 2 (46:28):
Oh yeah, the health care is a whole chapter in the.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Book Absolute bitch, and it is not given to you
and for you to you know, to save yourself from
paying one hundred thousand dollars if you get hit by
a car, you have to spend two thousand dollars out
of your own pocket, you know, like paying for yourself
and your partner and navigating. That made us feel so vulnerable.

(46:52):
And again, yes we are all by all degrees successful.
You know, we were pretty well paid, not yet giant
paid ladies. But the vulnerability we felt by not knowing
how long our health insurance was going to last, what
we were going to have to pay for it. There's
there's something here where if you have health insurance corporately

(47:13):
and you can extend your same plan for on. It's
called Cobra. And we say it's not a snake, but
it kind of fits.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
You know.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
We were waiting, I remember my husband, I were waiting
on on getting like that. Cobra wouldn't start until we
got a card in the mail, like it was nineteen
fifty more so for a week, don't have any health insurance,
you know, and I can't tell you like in Australia,
just go. We're on Medicare and we've spent twenty bucks.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
That's hard to conceive of here.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
It's your biggest fear here. It is almost bigger than
money itself, because it's like, if something happens to me,
who's going to take care of me? And how am
I going to pay for it? So that is that
is that this chapter two money Then it's healthcare. So
you have to learn so quickly all of these these
things that are so foreign to you. How are you

(48:03):
going to pay your bills? How are you going to
get yourself around? Like how long your money's going to last?
Like you know, we're both you know, I'm a bread
women are in my place, you know, I take care
of my mom in Australia as well, Like we all
have these things we had to look at really hard,
and but there is you know what's so crazy about
And it comes back to pride when you learn to

(48:26):
get your head and your arms around that and learn
how to function in some ways that you'd taken for granted.
It's like, no, I can do I can bloody do this,
you know what I mean? I can be on my
own for a while. I can, Like yeah, maybe I can't.
You know, I shouldn't be paying for all these Ubers
this month the New York some ways absolutely fine, you know,
all that kind of stuff, and you break a habit,

(48:46):
but you learn so much more. And I think in
the difficulty of that instead of climbing those mountains of
re establishing yourself financially, reputationally, professionally, it's really hard. And
we are coming at this from you know, two and
a half years later, and we want to give a
shortcut because we had to do all of that. We

(49:06):
had to do all that slog We.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
Did the work.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
You don't have to.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
You know, it was dark and it's depressing, and it's
it's murky almost like purposefully. So the COPT situation is complicated.
It's state by state. You know, there is not a
universal sort of like shortcut here. And I think that

(49:31):
you know, this book sort of serves two purposes, right,
It's the fifty percent that's the service, like let us
stop you from having to google, you know, do fifty
different Google searches, like here's.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Everything in the book.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
And then it's this other fifty percent of you know,
the women's stories, the women.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
That we speak to in the book and which are.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Incredible part of it too. Really just a.

Speaker 5 (49:54):
Broad array of women of various ages and who have
various levels of recognizable success Lace Cut.

Speaker 4 (50:05):
They were all on the sofa, wants to.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Curring, and they all felt vulnerable. Patilisa Cooter, Jimmy Lee, Curtis,
Toronta Burke, you know, all of these people, no matter
what level of success you have, and of course breaking news,
it's easy to have more money than less. We all
know that. But the feeling when you lose your job
is the same, and you feel like shit, and that

(50:31):
does not you know that that unifies actually, and that's
what's given us this community. And it was really important
for us to to speak to women who would you
would think her goals, you know, who are the absolute
zenous of all this because because what do you mean
is something bad happened to Opra? She's on Maui with
a mask and ful of vegetables. You know. But when
she was twenty two years old, you know, when she

(50:54):
was fired.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
For her recall of that day, she brought back the
detail and the level of specificity of her recalling the
details of her firing were so vivid, and it was
such a reminder that it doesn't matter where you end
up in life, that it is a traumatic event for everyone.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
It happens to even Oprah.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
And I'm talking about it again, you know, and she
said she's hardly talked about it.

Speaker 5 (51:24):
She's really hardly talked about it because it's like she's
not poked that bruise.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
She bottled it.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (51:29):
Yeah, Christina, what was your lowest ebe?

Speaker 3 (51:36):
You know, telling my daughter who was old enough to know,
you know, she there was no sugarcoating it with her,
and she couldn't understand, you know, she was she was
sixteen fifteen at the time. She didn't understand, you know,
she's you know, she was still young enough. My son

(51:56):
is much younger, and you know, kind of got it,
kind of didn't. She couldn't equate the fact that I
had worked hard, I had done a good job, and
I was successful. She didn't understand why they didn't, you know,
want me anymore. And having to kind of explain it
in like almost clinical terms, you know that this was
not personal. She couldn't separate that. So having to explain

(52:20):
what happened to you to your kids is tough. That
was a hard you know, that was a hard conversation.
So I would say that was probably a moment when
you know you you you want a script, you know,
you sort of want the narrative, you know, kind of
laid out for you.

Speaker 4 (52:36):
I don't know, Laura, what was yours?

Speaker 1 (52:38):
I think I think just understanding that all the responsibility
was entirely on me. I had to carry everything financially.
I was now there was no given, there was nothing
landing in my bank account every two weeks. It was all,
you know, LB had to work it out. I am
the breadwinner of my house. I do, you know, have
a lot of responsibility in Australia and and and all

(52:59):
the healthcare and is just was like, okay, no one's
gonna just show up. I mean they showed up, but like,
all of this is on me. I'm responsible for all
of this expenditure in New York City and all of
all of this stuff in two different countries with various
family members and everything else, and be okay and there's

(53:20):
no and especially the healthcare because that was that's so
jarring and you resent it so much. Just that was
really just like oh, kind of bad, but fuck all right,
this is this is all a man God bless have enough.
You know, we have ability and we know that, but
at the time at the time when there's a bill
from here and you don't have your healthcare card and

(53:40):
you're not sure where the next thing's coming from. It's
it can get dark. But you you, that's why you
have to sort of be open and communicate and get
reminded by people you know that it's going to be fine.
And that's that's what saves you, is this kind of
sticking your hand up or going for the meeting and
everything else so you don't get too lost in that moment.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
So you have to find the humanity and the humanity
in your life, in the relationship you've created, and you've
nurtured it, even I sometimes unwishingly.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
And is it often there in places where you didn't
think it would be, like in fashion, like in our industry,
you know, in our industry, which is often seen as
being less than human, you know. And again because in
any business, the sort of old fashioned values do come
to play. You're a good person and you worked hard,
and it's a very American thing, you know, And this

(54:34):
is what I really do. You know, this country is
really in it right now. But what I really appreciate
about this country is if you show up and you
work hard, you are rewarded. And you know, I do
say to friends sometimes now and I'm the Aussie girl.
We're going like, oh, I don't know about this, or
well I shouldn't say that I was proud of when
when I sort of go, this is America, this is
America Australian so we're like, you know what, bullshit, you

(54:56):
aren't that, honey, you did that and I learned that.
I learned that here, you know, over the years, and
it is and it is something that I would recommend
to everyone. Australia is a bit like, oh I did this,
but i'd want to I'm going to be self deprecating
because I don't want to get knocked off at the knees.
And australly is odd because we sort of we you know,
we celebrate, we don't want people to get above their station,
but we love shiny international success as well, and so

(55:19):
we're sort of these two levels all the time out thread.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
And there's a phenomenon, there's a phenomenon that in Australia
will respect someone more who's gone overseas and made it
rather than someone who's kind of tried to out. Yeah,
sometimes people unrecognized here come back from Australia and the
door come from America and the doors open to them.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Yeah, we're a funny bunch of Christina's looking. She hasn't
been down yet. We're going to come down, I think
in January.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
So how have you not? It's far, it's far.

Speaker 5 (55:56):
You've got plenty of time, girl, although now you're working again.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Never stop.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
I'm taking it to see the kangaroos. I'm doing it all.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Got to get to the kangaroos sanctuary.

Speaker 5 (56:06):
Because both of you are in relationships and so, Laura,
you were just a couple of months off getting married
and you had kids and a husband. Christina, I'm very
curious about how much the men in your life felt
when you lost your jobs.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Did they kind of like it?

Speaker 3 (56:31):
We don't talk about this much in the book, but
my partner was the creative director of the magazine that
I worked for. Oh, so when I lost my job,
he lost his job as well. Oh. Granted the magazine
was one of his many clients. Right, he has a

(56:52):
creative agency, and he was a creative director, as you know,
one of many brands that he worked on in his portfolio,
and so you know, he was also out you know,
alongside me.

Speaker 4 (57:08):
So I wouldn't say he was happy about that time.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
But it you know, obviously it was different. He wasn't
the boss of the magazine, but you know it impacted
his you know life as well, professionally, not just personally.
I think what we both have gained from it, right,

(57:34):
is this opportunity to sort of step back and say,
wait a second. We were nose to the grindstone all
the time. We traveled all the time, often together, where
we were leaving our kids for you know, chunks of
time with you know, babysitters or my brilliant parents who
were always you know there for us. But you know,

(57:58):
we sort of were able to look at each other
and say, you know what like that, that was nice
to be together, but it wasn't so great for the kids,
and it wasn't so great for our life style. It
was very chaotic to have to you know, travel in
these chunks. So I think that's some of the boundary
setting that as I sort of you know, re emerged

(58:21):
and you know he took on you know, you know,
different opportunities.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
You know, we were able to have that.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
Conversation together, but no, I mean, the job loss impacted
us both personally and professionally.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Laura, Yeah, I think for me Brandon was just was
like my my, you know, uh not even husband, but
we've been together almost got ten almost ten years in
a september, But he was like what the hell? Like
A was number one, just like are you serious? Like
you're fantastic at your job and who are these idiots?
Blah blah blah. You know, that's sort of loyalty thing

(58:57):
number one. Two. I think what ended up happening it
is again as similar thing to Christina. We'd go away
to these these these chunks of time and do all
this sort of stuff and and somebody they'd come along
with me and he would really love it or you know,
and and and so I think what ended up happening
and what's actually been a real benefit, even though like
at the beginning starting my own business, I'm invoicing people

(59:19):
and writing down when the money's coming and all of
that rickety rickety stuff. I think what has benefited both
of us in the end is that we have our
rhythms of our day are more similar now and and
we can you know, even Christina has an can go
into an office, but we can all have the we
can work remotely, we can work when we're away, and

(59:39):
so it gave both of us, at least in the
first year. I was like, Oh, we have all this mobility,
let's go and take it. You know, let's go I
can zoom from some random place of a monitor trip.
So I think that was head actually that I do,
you know, the HIV organization, So but I could I
could go and do my work from there because I can't.

(01:00:00):
So I think that in the end it did. It
was certainly better for us. He will we. I think
any any relationship, household, depending on your your your incomes,
has its own economy. You have to set up you know,
if someone's the bread whenner, someone's going to go get
the groceries. You know, someone's going to go and run
the errand. And then I think that's how any any

(01:00:20):
any relationship you know, works, So we certainly have have
worked that out. But yeah, I mean at the very
much shocked at the time, but I think how things
have sort of ended up to and you know, God,
two and a half years later, there is a calm
that kind of kind of comes because we're not also
chasing around a lot of bullshit things that that you know,

(01:00:41):
came with our jobs, and there are bullshit things in
anywhere you work. And suddenly when you kind of, you know,
when you're conked on the head like those old Disney
cartoons and the stars are going around book, you know
what I mean, you kind of And why'd I give
a touss about that? They didn't give me anything, you know,
but sometimes you have to get conked on the bloody head.

Speaker 5 (01:01:01):
Well, I mean, I think you're a great conk on
the head, Laura, You're just a constant. I think you're
a constant conk. I want you just to tell me
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
I want you to tell me.

Speaker 5 (01:01:15):
About the night that you went for a drink after
Christina got tried, and the selfie that you decided to
put up that started at all. Yeah, and as I
want to hear it from Christina because I think, because yeah,
please take it to her. Yeah, I want to know
how it appeared from her through the prism of her

(01:01:38):
lens at that time.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Well, Laura is very straightforward, right. So in the taxi
on the way over, we were.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Racing to this really fancy place.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
MX Centurion Lounge, which a friend of ours was doing.
You know, pr four and it invited us for a drink,
and so, you know, these are the things you do
when you are suddenly laid off. You're like, great, y'all
go to a fancy place, have like expensive wine, cool,
cool the time.

Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
So we both show.

Speaker 3 (01:02:07):
Up and on the way there, you know, Laura said, Okay,
here's what we're going to do. We're going to take
a selfie and we're going to post it and say
all the cool girls get fired. And I thought, yeah, okay,
I'll teach you you we Yeah, I was down with it. Listen,
I am not the social media you know queen. But

(01:02:31):
I think this sort of went along with what I
really thought was important from the beginning, which was letting
people know I didn't leave that job willingly. And the
word fired is taboo, and I thought there was a
little bit of you know, sauce to the post.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
I thought it was cheeky and I needed to get
back in the workforce.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
I needed to, you know, telegraph that I'm available. And
by telling people you are fired, you are sending a
signal like hey, true thing happened and like let's take
a meeting.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
So so I wasn't against it at at all. I mean,
This was before collab posts, so I imagine that would
have probably been a decision I would have had to make,
like am I gonna let Laura just be the one?
Or you know, are we both going with it. I
don't know what the answer would have been. You know,
back then it was still very raw. But we posted it,
and you know, we were overwhelmed by the responses from

(01:03:36):
the women who commented, and you know, some of them
said simply, you know, been there, part of the club,
Thanks for your honesty.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Wow, you guys are really owning it. No one says
they've been fired. Someone wrote I knew it, you know,
because I think they, you know, they were like I
knew she had been fired, Like there was no way. Yeah,
And you know, and then we went to sleep and
woke up the next morning and we're having a laugh
just about you know, the sort of insane response the

(01:04:13):
post scot and the number of comments. And I called
Laura and I remember standing in my bathroom. It was
like eight thirty in the morning. I was getting you know,
ready to take the kids to school, and I said,
I said, you.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
Know, like putting out a makeup, like trying to do
you know, one of those, and I said, this is
a book. It's a book, like I knew.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
And listen, we're not self help, you know, divas, this
is not We're not in the category. This is a
you know, we sort of chuckle that this is the
categorization of the book because we, you know, we're not
experts on anything except what it feels like to be
fired and what it feels like to get out there

(01:05:00):
and get over it. And I think the fact that
there were so so many corroborative post like comments, you know,
we knew we had to talk to these women.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
I wanted to hear from them.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
We wanted to sort of connect with this incredible kind
of community that you know, sort of swelled around Laura's post,
and so we knew that was the first step. And
this is the book we said we were going to write.
You know. A couple of weeks later, we were sitting
on the couch at my parents' house down in Virginia.
It was my dad's seventieth birthday, Richard's, and we wrote

(01:05:34):
a book proposal over two days, too many pictures of
Margarita's And this is the book we said we were
going to write.

Speaker 5 (01:05:44):
And it's a book that no one else has written,
which is unusual.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
They say in the end the states there's a white
space as a white space for that book, but there
was no one has written it. Because I think again
what we're trying to address is to this point, there's
been a lack of ownership of this of of what's
happened to you, And we owned it, and and we
owned to a degree that we've now this resource that

(01:06:11):
we hope. I mean, we've had women coming up to
I've had women coming up to me in the street,
you know, going like, when's the book coming? I can
always it. Really, I've been fighted and it's already and
the thing isn't even on the bloodyshelves yet, it's already.
We can feel these little tweaks of changes of behaviors
of like no, it happened to me too. It happened

(01:06:31):
to me too, and where that it wasn't there before,
or you know, or I have a need for this
when when can I read it? But there's also we
have this inbuilt community that we had in that very
first night and women writing us either you know, we
have an email address for our you know, our core
girls email address. We've had so many women sharing us stories,

(01:06:52):
and a bunch of them were in the book. And
we still have every day a few dms from people
about what it is all and we've responded to every
single one of them because we know there is that
community there and we know how alone you can feel
when this happens, and we don't want anyway to feel
like that.

Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
And also what you've done that's very beautiful is that
you've found each other. So so many women like you said,
it's such a lonely experience, and then when you add
the cloak of shame and the secrecy in the whatever,
it's very isolating. But what you've done is counter to
that intuition. Reached out and gone where's my friend? You

(01:07:33):
held hands, you drank Margarita's, you posted a selfie, and
now you literally written a book that I think will
help so many women find their freedom and their feet again.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Thank you. And I got to say, Christina, one of
the best words in the English languages is how Australians
say beautiful. Yes, the loveliest compliment. That was like, oh,
it's beautiful. It is the most it is the greatest compliment.
It is the greatest appreciation. And we really love to
hear that, And that was the entire point, you know,

(01:08:08):
even coming from a bit of our chest beating at
the beginning, like you know what this you know has
has become this this kind of ground spot. And as
you said when you at the very start of this recording,
when you were saying you were sending pictures to your
girlfriends and parts of that book and how that can
be awful, we're just honored and thrilled to hear that.

(01:08:29):
You know, Oh, this is the book that your girlfriend
should give you. You know, when when this happens, we
want it to be that you already doing that, so.

Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
We won't give it to her before she gets fired.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
And guess well, you know what it is here?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
It is, you know, and I think that that we
want that to be that sort of that that that
tool and that roadmap and that shortcut tool. You know,
through all of this work that we've done, that we
can make these girls, boys and otherwise feel better.

Speaker 5 (01:09:04):
If finally, if you could whisper one thing to yourself
before you got what would it be, Christina.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
It's going to be Okay, God damn it, that was mine.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Maybe that's maybe that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Yeah, it is going to be okay. I thing be beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, I mean, listen, it's better than okay, right, But
in that moment, I did not walk into that room
telling myself it's going to be okay. And now it's
better than okay, you know. I mean, it's it's been
such a you know, curious and fascinating journey that Laura

(01:09:43):
and I are on. And if we can be not
only friends to each other, but friends to a community
out there who are going through it, you know, that's
the biggest reward of all.

Speaker 5 (01:09:53):
Who doesn't want to be friends with all the cool
girls the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
Cool girl band?

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
This is the club to join.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Thanks Laura, Thanks Christina.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:10:07):
Thanks Kate.

Speaker 5 (01:10:10):
So that was Laura Brown, a very own Naussy, and
Christina O'Neill, co authors of All the Girls Get Fired.
This story is such a powerful and very much timely
reminded that getting fired, no matter how shameful or devastating
it feels in the moment, doesn't have to be the end.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
Of the story.

Speaker 5 (01:10:34):
It can be the start of something braver, freer, and
more true to who you are. If today's conversation resonated
with you, I would love for you to share this
episode with a friend who might need it, and don't
forget to follow No Filter wherever you listen to your
podcasts so you never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Because we're all in this together, don't you worry. We
will be popping links.

Speaker 5 (01:10:57):
To Laura and Christina's book in the show notes, as
well as other ways for you to stay connected to
their work. Thank you for listening, and until next time,
here's defining the kind of success that can ever be
taken away from you. The executive producers of No Filter
are Nama Brown and Breed Player. Sound design is by
Jacob Brown. I'm your host, Kate lane Brook, and I'll

(01:11:20):
be back with you next week. This episode was recorded
at the Lovely Studio Session in Progress

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Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill Had the Coolest Jobs in Magazines - Then They Got Fired

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill Had the Coolest Jobs in Magazines - Then They Got Fired