Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill, ALL THE COOL GIRLS GET FIRED: How to Let Go of Being Let Go and Come Back on Top

[1:19]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. Laura Brown and Christina O'Neill are coauthors of All the Cool Girls How to Let Go of Being Let Go and Come Back on Top. This was recorded live at Bloomingdale's along with Doctor. Harold Koplowitz, who is the head of the Child Mind Institute and founder, who introduced the event. Child Mind, Bloomingdale's, and Zippy Media partnered on this fantastic event preholidays, which I hope you can hear. We had some background noise. I hope it doesn't bother you too much, but the conversation was really great. Laura Brown is the founder of LB Media and the chair of RED's Creative Council. She sits on the board of RED, the Fashion Trust US and Me Too movement, and Foot Soldiers Park Selma. Previously, she was editor in chief of In style, executive editor of Harper's Bazaar, and senior editor at W. She earned her BA in arts and communication from Charles Stewart University in New South Wales, Australia. She lives in Manhattan with her husband. Christina O'Neill is head of Sotheby's Media and editor in chief of Sotheby's Magazine. Previously, she served as editor in chief of WSJ Wall Street Journal Magazine, executive editor at Harper's Bazaar, and worked at New York Magazine and Time Out New York. Christina also serves on the board of Swedish fashion brand Totem and is a City Meals ambassador. A graduate of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, she serves on the Gallatin Alumni Council. Christina lives in Brooklyn with her family.

[3:29]Kristina O'Neill: Welcome. Thank you so much. This will be an episode of Totally Booked with Zippy which is a daily author interview podcast. If you haven't listened, please tune in and there are conversations just like this about thirty minutes or less and we'll chitchat and then you all can ask a few questions and get your books done and all the good And I'm just so excited you're all here. Thank you and thank you so much to Bloomingdale's for hosting us. Thank you. Okay, all the cool girls get fired. You are obviously cool. Thank you for this, Eleni, if you're fired. Figured. I mean, if you have to put that you're cool on the book cover. Like, no, really. I am so cool. Tell everybody about how you got fired. Let's just like bring you down right away. And

[4:13]Laura Brown: also, explain which one you are and a little more about it. I'm Laura Brown. Is ding dong. This is going be fun for the podcast. So, just checking over all our Gong, Sarah Neil. We actually a bit of backstory on us. I moved to New York from Sydney, Australia on 09/04/2001 and I ended up at New York Fashion Week on the evening of 09/10/2001. Obviously it was night before everything changed through it but on that night I met one Christina O'Neill at the Mark Jacobs Fashion Show. And so we came up together, she was already working 2001 and I was kind of just new here. So we both kind of paralleled each other's experience. We both had dreamt about working in the magazines and after this our whole life. We ended up overlapping for seven years, eight years at Heart Bazaar before Christina went on to become editor at WSJ Magazine and four years after that, I was editor in style. And then enough to brag, I was fired first. Thank you. Myself and my whole team were laid off on our same Monday in February 2022. Had We one of the magazines in that group that had three different moments. Since 2016 it was timing which kind of flamed out pretty fast. After we started it was a company called Merit which is a Des Moines, certainly a beauty company and then we were bought by Dotdash. I got that here and we drove the company in late October in February. So yes it was on a Zoom and I got twenty minutes notice. And then we were of course on the Zoom and played off as Nicole that the Prince of America was closing. I remember back up a bit of a backstory more on me. Either the beginning of COVID I'd sort of known a little bit that maybe I would want to be in magazines forever and if I was an exorcist I worked for my biennie and the economy of magazines was wearing off. So I registered my own business and I thought maybe I'll take my leave at the end of twenty twenty two. I did not think. We're going to get absolutely like Escan did in February. And I remember after we all hung up for Zoom and even though I'd been not totally focused on my managing editor was like we haven't had a budget yet. I was like oh! Didn't have one to glob and get fired. After we all were kind of laid off I got everybody back on the Zoom and said just hit that link, there's no HR running anymore. Left the theatre. And I remember saying to them some things that have since become fine with this very book you're holding here. Which was your value is yours, your experience is yours, it would be a bit of her way to document. And being quite stubborn about that and then I kind of went off and commenced doing my own thing but then cut to, if you want me to cut to fourteen months later, I got fired.

[7:19]Kristina O'Neill: And that was about I did not have the pleasure of having my entire team wiped out at the same time. I just one of one. I was singled out. I was called to HR. We had a new sort of context. The journal had a regime change at the top. We had a new editor in chief of the newspaper. And she started in early February. And February went by and we didn't have a meeting. March went by, we didn't have a meeting. And I thought, well, maybe it's just because we're down here being so successful doing our thing. But lo and behold, when I finally had time with her in late April, the meeting went from her office and seven minutes before it got switched to HR. So I knew my date was sealed. But from that moment under the table in HR when I was being sort of pushed by packet of paper, and texted Laura and said, you know, I'm getting the boot. She was traveling so I said, you know, call me as soon as you can. And I think what I realized in the moment was just how much I didn't know about what was about to come, what was happening in real time, whether or not I needed a lawyer and all the things that were in the packet were just sort of foreign to me. Navigating the American healthcare system is not fun. There are a lot of things that simply overwhelm me when you're already feeling very kind of vulnerable. Vulnerable and totally out of sorts and all the good things. Then suddenly you're handed this like very thick packet of paper with decisions that have to be sort of made and in many ways they want them made very quickly. So that was sort of where this idea for the book came from because here I am googling a lot of things and I just couldn't believe there wasn't a resource that had all the information that I really needed in the moment captured in one place. I should say also, I grew up obsessed with magazines. Did anybody here love magazines? I poured over in styles pages. It was crazy and I worked at Vanity Fair for one summer during college and we went department to department and one day we had a whole panel on what's going to happen with this new thing called the internet and everyone's like, It's fine. It's not going to bother us. And I was like, Okay. And we went right back to work and I thought right then, there's no path from being the intern to being editor in chief or a contributor

[9:54]Laura Brown: and it turns out you all figured it out. That's funny you mentioned that. We were at Harvest Bazaar we were told we were going to get the internet and have a website and that if Harvest Bazaar was going to split one staff member, it's going have half. Or I thought, well which half? At that time it was like okay it'll be half, half the restaurant requirement Cosmo or whatever it was. That's how the market's so crazy now and we're looking at AI coming out and it's like the internet was like half of the world. It was great in the book hearing, even though you got hired from these jobs, how you came up in these jobs as well, which was very interesting. I thinking was when you're hopefully, especially with a career that you're more of a world classmates when you're younger and we're all similar ages and if you can't pull it up here, they were the shiniest things weren't Everybody was glamorous and connected and I think we're very grateful that we had that. I think as in any job you work with an interview stuff beyond it or understand what gets measured, which you certainly do. I wrote that we had that at the time since we moved more kind of not. I feel like this is the era of destigmatization.

[11:06]Kristina O'Neill: We are destigmatizing one thing after another, menopause. We're just clearing the ranks so that people can talk about everything and this is the official destigmatization of being fired. Like that is what this book is. It is a manual. It is a rallying cry. It is like the definitive throwdown. Talk a little bit about this and how it is not just a book but this is really a movement. Yeah, I mean when we got fired working in fashion it's obviously, as Laura likes to say, it's like tip of the spear shaky. Like it is a very superficial industry and you are judged on literally where you sit at a fashion show. So we grew up in an industry when people would leave their role, they lied about it. Like there was, you know, they would obfuscate, they would create sort of alternative narratives around why they were charting. No one ever walked out the door and said, I just got fired. So when it happened to us, mean, obviously now it's been three years, but at the time I couldn't imagine and my boss did say to me in the meeting, she said, We'll follow your narrative. And I knew that was the opening where I could have gone home and come back the next day and said, Okay, I got it. I'm going to launch K. O. Media. We're gonna pretend like I've been thinking about this for months and whatever. I could not imagine life. Like, I just I'm not a liar. Like, you know, I I would be walking around with a heat flash comparing this sort of boat burst forward. So in that moment, I knew for me personally, I had to own it. But I would tell they like, it made them uncomfortable that I wanted to go out there and just sort of say, no. It's on YouTube. You guys are going have to own that you're making this decision. And I think that just gave us the courage to tell ourselves, if we can't lie to ourselves and our friends and our family, there's no version of what do I gain by lying to a bunch of blank people out in our industry.

[13:11]Laura Brown: So that was really important to me personally that I didn't have to carry a lie forward. I think also ego. Like in a way we knew our world, we rated our jobs, we got fired, these two things can't exist. And so it wasn't like oh that's terrible, wouldn't have had a met. Weren't in spasm. Like no wait, see Shorter says that so I feel like she was.

[13:35]Kristina O'Neill: If you work with the journal you're pretty spooky queen. These

[13:40]Laura Brown: two things can happen together and we can be honest about that and there's actually no reflection on our abilities. The business situation was what it was and we were where we are when we sit in December 2025 with all the Trump administration, whole government department, AI, all the stuff that would have just caused you this absolute plague of layoffs. Then why are you going to sit there and go on smile? Know what I mean? Because 95% of the time this is happening to people who are probably able be good for jobs too. And so it was even just sort of taking that quite stubborn stance and taking a fine term like we took this trope, this tired old trope which is a magazine trope which is all the cool girls, you know, reddish king, all the cool girls though, the shit's strong, the cool girls have this everybody, whatever it is. All the cool girls get fired and just immediately we're like let's upturn this. And then you see people just even the title kind of fly up and when we meet women out who come up to us the nerier we're almost at the last couple of our hospital right now the nerier women have come and say I've been eyewitnesses, I've had a you a high five, which is so cool. Then you're tired of this position. And it's just like so much of it is the shame and the things that you carry within yourself at Melrose. And if you carry that around, it's much harder to

[15:03]Kristina O'Neill: have people help you with what comes back. If you are sort of pretending like it didn't happen the way it actually did and you're creating this sort of help. You know, I think it is much harder to know that someone's going through something, they're not talking about it, right? I I think we found that by owning it, you immediately unlock it, you have the conversation, it's out in the open, there's no pretend, and you're able to say like, okay, let's talk, we don't need to talk fast. What do you want to do now? What do you want to do next? How can I help you? And people are think people are gonna need to help people and help them along. You know, we're positive people who do tell, remember not, you know, we don't love the idea of people sort of following the shame of it. I think it's really hard enough to put it out there because it does stop. And the sooner you sort of able to get on with this, a lot of goods can come from that. How many people here have been fired from one job or an okay? Has anyone here not been fired? Person. You're hired. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. So we're all losers, which is great. We're all cool. No, I'm kidding. So we're all cool. That's wonderful. We're all living, we're all living nice rich atmosphere. Well, being fired, I mean, notion that people have the same jobs forever is just gone. Like everything is changed. Every day that companies change, priorities change, how can this not happen? This is like a necessary byproduct. So instead of I feel like part of the issue is the positioning of a job to begin with. You

[16:42]Laura Brown: might not be here forever. Yeah, the job itself will change and it's funny because we sort of joke over and we sort of say, oh we're lean out over here. Sheryl Sandberg represents the lean in and at that time it was very much how do you succeed within a corporate structure and how do you support each other to do that and how can you behave basically. But since that time, ten, fifteen years ago, work itself has changed. The corner office which is a corporate workplace is actually a male structure. Corporate titles are military titles. The chief is, the chief is. So we get to risk longer to get to that place which is why sometimes we fall from that moment, it's harder. But what we have at our fingertips now is far broader ways to work than that oh I'm not successful and I'm so good at that time. You can work part time, you can do gig based stuff, you can bake cookies on TikTok. You can do all of these different ways to exist and make money than the judgement of like do you know when real public coming up there was like on a resume if someone had left a job before two years it was like what's wrong with them then?' And now someone's got 60s going on. And it was a change, I learned that, but I laid off. Judgment too, there's certainly more empathy. If you allow yourself to see that and most of us have financial imperatives in we've got to take a job as soon as possible. But there is a kernel in your brain always that can maybe just take a tiniest quilt to go okay, is out there for me that I was there something about the ritual of his life or this job that I didn't like and I would like to leave behind? There's something else I might want to explore. Again, may not be where you can earn a price every day. Might not be that. Life is not a tuition reward. We know we love it if it was. But there is all these avenues open to you on that day where corporate corner office just sounds like madmen now.

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[20:57]Kristina O'Neill: But how do you know when there's actually stuff you need to work on? I mean, it's one thing to say like we're all cool for being fired but maybe some people are being fired because there's something they're doing but it's not the best. Don't know. I

[21:14]Laura Brown: think you're fired for calls. You need to sit real and why. There is a way a lot of those questions are the same. Was I the right fit here? Did I do well here? Was I resentful here? Wasn't that what stuck here? Was I unproductive and unhelpful because did it behave badly? All of those things are still kind of a behavioral recalibration I guess or a values recalibration. But you're shocked into having to speak about it. We don't know bad things well.

[21:43]Kristina O'Neill: Has anyone in here ever had to fire someone else? Yeah, so that's another layer to this. Is there a good way to fire someone? Like what can all the people, because this is a two way street, how can managers do a better job letting people go and not leaving people in the dust feeling shame because I feel a part of it is on them. Yeah, I mean one thing that I think we've seen a lot of in the sort of post COVID era is the eval can be turned off in the middle of the firing. The people come out of the meeting and suddenly they're locked out of their computers and they're being dropped by our side a little bit. Think if they're being fired for God, probably very different and hey, probably there's a reason to lock them out of their computer. But I think if you can do it with as much humanity and grace and dignity and give as much information as you can that you're really able to reveal, I think in my case, I got the old we're going in a different direction. Fair enough, They're never going to tell you maybe the entire laundry list of reasons that they're going in that direction but it's enough to just make you sort of feel like, okay, I'm not the fit for what her vision is going forward and I'm going to have to do okay with that. That be great. We've

[23:03]Laura Brown: had hate therapy. There's a legend that a Chakobahi here who worked for for her and she's fun, quite excellent. She was the one that actually said room for washing, but it's taking a centimeter long over. We've learned a lot from her. She's very straightforward, very athletic, kind of a bit shit happens y and you're like, you know, call me. And especially if it's something that is bigger than you, to remind people that. So they're not sitting and taking on that burden on themselves and especially when we are in Gaylords with Slayoffs era but you know what I mean there is moments that's going on and sometimes it is a decision that is know it's a scam. So try to not even though you've got to keep this is in the front, emphasize the HRs too because they've got to keep to the stage. You've got to be so irritated. So to relay that empathy within

[23:59]Kristina O'Neill: script is a real part. I wonder how people would feel if you laid them off but gave them a copy of your book. Wonder what that A note to HR's across America, are

[24:10]Laura Brown: happy for both sides. No one wants to admit that that would be useful but actually if you do give someone a handbook or some set of tools in that moment when they are available. Speaking of Child Mind and everything, we had woman who runs an organization who calls college students to work and she came to one of our signings, Mary, and she said, Oh my god, I could give this to 700,000 college students on our roster to make them understand it's going to happen at some point and it's not here. And you can check yourself. So that sort of thinking as well is it getting younger folks early and just making them understand it's part of the rhythm of work and change of work then and not to take it on as many of us maybe have more.

[24:56]Kristina O'Neill: So, book is the nuts and bolts that you need and the manual and the guidebook but also there are stories from so many amazing women scattered throughout which I feel like if I had an essay from Oprah, I would probably put it on the cover of my book. Like I didn't even know till she was like the last essay. I'm like I'm glad I read to the end because this is like the best essay in the whole book. We were building up when we were signing up Everest. Yeah, exactly. So we interviewed 15 women who are high profile now, but weren't at the time of their firings. Not necessarily, Katie Kirk was high profile, but Oprah was very early in her career. She was around 23 years old when she was fired from the network. And it was really important to us because A, we wanted an assortment of voices whose firings look very different than ours. And to have those examples to not like I got corporately fired, I got past the paperwork, HR executives were sitting in the room, etc. But a lot of people get fired in very different ways now. Some of them take on investors who then push them out. Some of them are fired by clients and maybe not the people who pay their overhead, but they're fired because the client relationship has run its course. So it was really important for us to have representation of different types of stories and to understand our stories are one version of this. But it meant a lot to us, I think, to have different people at different levels in their career, different financial and economic situations, and who reacted very differently. Some people could not get up off the scope for many days and then other people just sort of thought, I've been waiting for this. I can't wait to get on to what's next. I think that breadth of experience is really important because you recognize ours is one

[26:48]Laura Brown: And side of obviously, if have more resources, the less you have watching more time and all of those things. But the feeling of getting fired is the same and the feeling is like shit. Is that feeling of being on the couch and why all these women who are now extremely successful, choose them deliberately as well because number one they will attack you, weren't these fancy pants. They fire them, two when you are there crying on the couch it can maybe fire up dreams a day. This lady, Oprah, are you joking off like she's hopped around Maui with a veggie basket? Know what I mean? She was embarrassed and she didn't want to be able to tell her dad and all that kind of stuff. There's a real breadth of experience there and sort of divided up very clearly into what happened and what the experiment happened. So there's very clean.

[27:45]Kristina O'Neill: I do feel there's a very clear through line to most of women who share their stories including both of you which is it felt like the worst thing that could ever possibly happen and yet it led to something usually better or it might not be obvious but had Oprah not been fired from that terrible job where her bosses were so horrific to her and asked her to get like plastic surgery, I mean, it's really bad. Mean, you read one thing, know, but then she might not have been might not have become Oprah. And same with Lisa Kudrow. I mean, when we see some of the actresses in the book, you know, we had the benefit of, you know, Laura and 20 other people got fired. When Lisa Kudrow got fired, they single like, an actress getting fired is an actress getting fired. That is the person who's doing the job being let go. And her story, I think, is such a great example because she was fired by Jimmy Burrows on Frasier. She was cast. They'd done the first table read. She thought her life was set. And they did the reading and they were like, you're not Roz. But out she is, like, kicked to the curb. And she literally thought her career was over. I was at task, I get moments, my breakthrough. And lo and behold, you know, she heard about Friends being kind of shopped around. She got an audition, walks into the room, guess who's doing the casting? Jimmy Burroughs. And he hired surf for Friends. So, you know, I think you have to play the long game. You can't count yourself out. You have to understand that in that moment, of course, it felt a thousand percent personal for her. But it didn't mean she wasn't good at her job. Just meant she wasn't great for that one. And you say in the book, by the way, that I did not know, maybe you all didn't know this, that the character of Phoebe Buffet was actually the twin sister of another girl. You all knew this except me. I was not mad about you. Okay. Alright. Alright. Well, if there's one other person in the world like me,

[29:36]Laura Brown: now you know. Kids serve as a useful and minor. Think I've buried it somewhere in my Yeah. Well,

[29:47]Kristina O'Neill: I do think that as I'm getting older, the universe works in all these weird ways and sometimes you can want something so badly and you want it to happen at a certain time or you want a job to continue or you want to get this job or you want this or a kid at this age or whatever it is and like it just doesn't happen And maybe there's a reason. Maybe it's just terrible. But if there's a reason and something good comes later, maybe then we can reframe the terribleness of it all. But Jeremy said we always laugh when you've just gotten fired and someone says you've that's best thing to Don't say it at the beginning. More

[30:23]Laura Brown: often than not they are, they are right. Just takes time.

[30:27]Kristina O'Neill: Honestly, I mean, you do have to grieve it and process it and go through the path, I mean, book obviously the first you know, six chapters are the, like, crummy stuff. Right? Like, do you need a lawyer? Navigating health care? You know, figuring out all the sort of, like, immediate urgent things. But then the second half of the book is, how do you get back in the workforce? Like, how do you position yourself? How do you write a LinkedIn bio that now includes a gap? You know, and I think there are things and a lot of lessons that come from that time and not everyone is given, like Laura said, more resources, more time. But if you are given the chance to sort of, you know, sit and reflect and really kind of like plug into what you did like and didn't like about that job,

[31:12]Kristina O'Neill: 95% of the things is more about that. We're gonna go to questions in a minute but I have to say I think it is so fitting we are in this beautiful new shoe department at Bloomingdale's to have this conversation because what you're doing is letting us all be in someone else's shoes for a minute. Okay. We are both Oh my god. You come with me? No, I'm know. Was like Going for the crickets. But seriously because I think sometimes we don't pause when things are changing so rapidly in society like they are now just to say like, you know what, this is not so easy that we don't know what our company is gonna do and there is this instability and lack of control but you know what, we're all in it together and we're gonna ride this out and that is the message I think your book really gives is one of hope. Yeah, and community. And community. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Okay. No, there is a high five and a hug. Awesome. Now you can get lots of shoes. Okay. That's the that's the end of the the podcast portion of the event. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank Thank

[32:19]Zibby Owens: you for listening to totally booked with Sibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.