Laura Brown: Life After Getting Fired Is Better Than You Think!

0:00In Walmart's Who Newville, everyone ready their cart. Amazing Black Friday deals are about to start. Online and in the app such great deals to explore. Everything you love from tech toys and more. The days to save and more. The day to save. The day to save. The day to day to day to day. Set your alarms. Don't miss out. These deals are epic, without a doubt. The who's are all ready. But are you? Walmart Black Friday deals await. Who knew? This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto.

0:45Bundling, just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I was at Talk Magazine working for Harvey Weinstein for six weeks, and then I started hard. I heard me. Did not think we would all be fired on Zoom. Today, I'm speaking to the amazing Laura Brown, who went from right at the top of the fashion world to having her life completely turned upside down. Every bit of experience you have is like a sort of a platform you stand on.

1:18And then you get taller and taller and taller and taller and taller through that experience and the only one who forgets that is you. Your value is yours. Don't give it away. Laura opens up about what it's really like when the career, identity and life that you've worked so hard for suddenly disappear and how you find your feet again. Going forward, what can you do to increase the happiness and decrease the unhappiness? Laura speaks openly about the experience of being fired and how so many people, even Oprah, have navigated it. In that shock moment, there's that sort of pile of papers that's being pushed at you, right?

1:51Whatever way it is. But the most important thing is... She shares how self-doubt can sometimes hold women back in the workplace and how to find pride in how far you've come, even when things don't go the way that you planned. We didn't construct the workplace. Men did. I'm not one to re-insulate the glass ceiling. Yes, we happen to be women and we're owning everything that happens to us. So if you're feeling a bit lost or unsure of what's coming next, I'm hoping that this talk is for you. Because no matter what happens, it is never too late to begin again.

2:28Well, Laura Brown. Yes. Hi. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, you've written an amazing book. You're on a massive book tour right now and you've written it with Christina O 'Neill. Yep, she's over there. I'll keep her in the back. Yeah, let's keep her hidden. No, she's off promoting in somewhere else. She's elsewhere. But I wanted to go back. I read something about you which I really, really liked. I feel like you're a brilliant hustler. Ah. And I wanted to find out when the hustle started. Oh, God. One of the things that I loved about you was that you, when you were kind of, I don't know, around 16, 17, you got on the phone to hustle a job at a magazine or in fashion?

3:12It was basically just, we would call it, I know we call it here like work experience. In the US it's interning. But it was back in the day when I was so single-minded, only child growing up, so single-minded that I wanted to be in fashion and magazines, which at the time in my teen years, which would have been, you know, early 90s, were like Oz. You know, we didn't have the internet as teenagers, right? So all of these big shiny things would come surfing down from New York and everything was otherworldly and those things. And I just wanted to be part of that in whatever way. So, you know, I rang up a magazine in Sydney and, you know, magazine market is and was tiny.

3:55But it was called, yeah, what was it called? Hero Magazine. and that was like my first internship. So you called a magazine off your own back? Well, you didn't have, what else? I couldn't send a fax. You know, we were sort of encouraged in high school, if you want to go and do work experience, you've got to go get it for yourself. There wasn't a teacher ringing us up. There wasn't someone going, here's all this money and blah, blah, blah. Didn't have any of that. And so, yeah, I really worked, like sort of work experience my ass off as a teenager and even through college I started college when I was 17 um and we finished at 19 our degrees actually same here I think three degrees three years as opposed to four yeah um because we just don't like to work no just kidding and I finished at 19 but even through all of my college years I was desperate to work so I would take any internship and I even left college early and finished by correspondence because I'd got no job because I just wanted to do it's a very Australian quality, like guilelessness.

4:55It's like, oh, yeah, I'll just give it a go. That's why we all jump on planes and come to different countries and everything else. Oh, I'll find. I think that we've got a little bit of give it a go, give it a go, give it a go because our worst case scenario in Australia isn't that bad. Like, you know, it's a pleasant place. And so we've always, and again, I think it's different now growing up because you have access to things on social that we didn't have. The first foreign country I ever flew to is what I moved to, and that was here, London. on a one-way ticket, you know. So you're just desperate to be part of things.

5:26And I think that that was more ingrained because we had less at our fingertips then. And so work ethic was strong in you. And I think with that comes, because I'm just sort of thinking about what happens to a woman when they get let go of or fired or lose their job in any way, why it's so difficult for us, perhaps more difficult than it is for men, because we are learning how to handle the shame. Yeah, I think that, you know, someone, it's funny because, I mean, I'm sure we'll get to this, the way we got around to this book was kind of a bit like, bugger that, we're really good at what we do and we happen to get fired.

6:10And they, you know, but one, we asked a friend of ours who's an HR, you know expert and we were just like okay why do you think um women can carry this shame or choose this shame because it is a head game right yes it is a choice and our friend bucky she's a bit older bucky keedy best name for hr ever and she was like well because it took us so much longer to get here yeah and you don't think and i certainly don't think but like every day we go to work with oh let's carry all of womanhood with me on my back this morning no but sometimes when this happens you do you do feel that and and and she said basically you spent so much time climbing up to your maybe your slippery rung you know or your rung and if you slip off that the falls harder because we didn't construct the workplace men did you know remember think all the things like the corner office goal the ceo cfo cmo that's all military terms it's all dude stuff you know and uh and it just did take us so much longer to to get there and we're still I just saw a stat today, still paid 81 cents on the dollar for a man.

7:15But I've never been the one to be like, oh, as a woman, it's so much harder. Oh, I'm not one to re-insulate the glass ceiling over my head. Yes, we happen to be women and we're getting on with it. Exactly. And we're owning everything that happens to us. And I think that is, at the end of the day, the most honest road is the easier one. What I love is that owning something, and it's something that I think is the same for men and women, when somebody can just own something, that is difficult. It's attractive. Right. It's confidence. It's confidence. There's ego in it. Yes. You know, there's certainly, and I think women need to have more ego in everything, and even the good and the bad.

8:00You know what I mean? Because it just means that you can take it and you're not – in some ways ownership comes from security. It's weird. It could be work. It could be health. It could be all of family. It could be marriage. It could be fertility. It could be all these things. And you don't have to send a press release about everything that's going on in your life. But, like, the more time you obfuscate or spin or – it's so debilitating. You have to carry all that around with you. And it just slows you down from where you're supposed to progress to. So I think that what we do work towards, especially professionally, is ownership of all your experiences.

8:42You want to give up all your ownership for how many years you work, 50 years you work to someone else. No, no, no, you earn this, especially every year that goes by. As we get older and more experienced, that's ours, that's ours. so by saying that you mean when you do leave somewhere where if you get if you get a job if you lose a job uh if you want a job if like something happens on the job all those experiences are your experiences and and especially away no and and especially if you lose a job you know and and that's what's quite subversive as well and what we found you know with um owning up to losing our jobs with this book but it is just it's so people react and appreciate honesty and boldness and a bit of like chest thumping in a way you know it's so interesting pride yes a bit of pride in a loss which is such a strange mix you wouldn't think you know you'd be like like it wasn't yeah certainly wasn't the best day ever you know to get fired but it was like no no we're good I was bloody good editor-in-chief I'm good at what I do now yes you know what I mean and we we got fired because the industry and this and that and all the reasons why media is um of morphing you know so much but there wasn't um thankfully much doubt about my ability through that time you know what I mean it was like and that's what we certainly encourage all women to remember and again it's such a head game like you've worked all these years and whatever I always say like every bit of experience you have is like a sort of a platform you stand on I mean you're little it's a little one and then you get taller and taller and taller and taller and taller for that experience and the only one who forgets that is you yes and you know the one who gives that away is you and uh and so that was you know for us when we instagrammed that with this title you know all the cool girls get fired not thinking we're going to write a book but just being like bugger this we got fired okay I'll do this sign it was probably a bit this sign you know was it was it was a sort of a subversive thing to do but it just by doing that just the women that responded to it so immediately that deluge it was like oh we'd like open this we'd open like a psychological doorway can we just talk about the day you posted that sure i'd like to let me have a diet coke yes yes i'd actually i'd actually like to get there by slightly talking about your job progression.

11:13Yeah. When you came to the UK, you got a good job and then you went on to get a job that you stayed in. Flew to the UK on my one-way ticket, you know, never having gone anywhere from 97 to 99. Then went back, because my visa expires, I went back to Sydney from 99 to 2001. And I remember I was working in a magazine there and we used to get these mail bags of all the shiny magazines from New York in like peak era, like 2000. Yes. and I would get the Vogue and the Harper's Bazaar and especially like the New York magazine. I remember sitting at home in Sydney and I had this lovely apartment but it's like it was a very unambiguous address.

11:49I overlooked Sydney Harbour. It was very clear where I was. But I remember I was reading like New York magazine Intelligencer, like the front part of it. And I was reading about some night in like the Moomba nightclub, some gossip thing, right? And I remember I was head down in this New York mag and I looked up and I'd forgotten where I was. I remember that so clearly. I was like, oh, I'd just gone. I had just gone to New York in my head. It was nuts. Then, yes, I moved to New York. Is that what made you want to move there? I mean, just reading about it. I was like, I want to be where the fashion is made, where the art is made, where the movies are made, where the peak of the peak of the creative universe and populace.

12:34Because Australia is wonderful, but we don't have that many people. You know what I mean? There's all the reasons. I think Australian had given you the courage to go because you'll go overseas. Yeah, because you'll just get on. Yeah. But I just wanted to be, it felt again at the time that we were getting everything secondhand. Right. You know, so literally a lot of the time. Yes. I was like, I want to see the thing with my eyes. Yes. So I think I had$5 ,000 US, two bags, and I arrived in New York on September the 4th, 2001. So a week before all that. Wow. Happened. But what was, so there's two and two and two.

13:11Could I just ask you about that? Yeah. I've got a ripper of a story with that one. Tell me. Not with the 11th, but the night before. So I'd been, I got there on the 4th. I had one great friend there called Libby Calloway, who was the fashion editor of the New York Post. And she was like my social fairy godmother. And on the 10th, it was Fashion Week. It was New York Fashion Week. And I'd arrived right in there. And I was, wah. and she somehow smuggled me into the Mark Jacobs show. And the Mark Jacobs show is still a huge deal, but in 2001 it was like everything. Everything. And it was on this pier into the Hudson and I think I cheated my way in there.

13:58No idea. And I walked in and everyone was like famous. It was Supermodel here. and like SJP, Carrie Bradshaw was there and this was there and this. And everyone was just like, I was like, oh, this is like the movie. I'm like in the movie. And I'd been there for six days and I had some stupid shoes on, probably had a big glass of champagne. And I was like, like audible gasp kind of stuff. And I remember tottering down to the bottom of the pier with someone I'd just met and being so beside myself and toasting down at the trade centre actually and just going, yeah, I'm here. But also what's funny on that night and before, you know, the world changed the next day.

14:35But that night I met Christina, my friend and co-author. She was working at Harper's Bazaar. I, again, wasn't working really yet. And I was introduced to her and she was sitting down quite coolly with like some glasses on. I was very overstimulated. And I remember to that day we say that I thought she was judging me and she thought I talked too much. And that's exactly the same relationship we have now. almost a quarter century later. But it was a really profound evening just for a new girl off a plane, for all those things. It was certainly the most profound we could never imagine the next day.

15:15It happened to me, a dear friend at that time. It's just when you sort of stir all that up together into a pot, it was pretty wild. I just want to ask you really about this idea of going somewhere, starting a new life, and then that happening. What did that do to you? I mean, in a way, it's not failing, but it's like, oh, God, I've come all the way here. And now what? You know what's weird? It's like, and it's so funny, we say this with regard to the book, too. But it's something that, it's something, a theory that sort of occurred to me more often than not in the last 20 years. Shock is an armor.

15:48Yes. You don't really, I was like, obviously an absolute shock. And God bless, like, no one I knew was harmed. I was fine. to my mother this horrendous September 11 as horrendous as it was it looked like World War III yes on the telly so she but she was like you need to come home and a lot of Australians were leaving but I was like oh I've just got here haven't I and I'm just at Christidi's getting my canned tuna and calling my mum on my blackberry like I just you just and even that particular night that was so what was so insane about the that night of September 11th everyone was out like everyone was like there were people coming from downtown covered in ash who just had gone to a bar or something because everyone was in absolute shock you know and so it wasn't like something like COVID 20 years later where everyone retreated everyone was out with each other and with it and so I just was like well I'm here I didn't know what else to do I just arrived I I was staying with my friend.

16:48I had my savings and I was like, well, work it out. And I did a bit of freelancing at the New York Post, I think, for a while. And I just kind of hustled along. But again, not with going like, oh, how am I going? You just sort of stuck my hand up for things. But yeah, I think I remember I had a bit of – I had a wobbly about two and a half weeks later. I think a friend of mine from London called me. And I remember that sort of moment where you're like, oh, God, shit, this is what we've all delayed shock, lived through. But I think the armour of shock is sometimes underrated. Yeah. You know? It can give you the tools to function in a situation when maybe if it had all sunk in, you wouldn't have.

17:29I mean, that's probably what people call resilience, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I've got through that. There's something in your body, in your, I don't know, adrenals or something that just goes, okay, you're going to be fetal in a minute but hold on you know let's just get this this thing done someone has to go to hospital you do this or you do that so I'm you know I know I wouldn't say I'm a fan of shock um but it certainly can keep you tight for a minute you ended up in a dream job yeah so I um after I actually spent I was at talk magazine working for Harvey Weinstein and Brown for a hot minute that closed down oddly enough what was that like I never really I mean No, I worked there for six weeks because they're in a closed act.

18:15Yeah, I'm the death knell for magazines. No, I remember walking into this giant – so Tina and Harvey had launched this huge enterprise. And again, this was peak, peak, peak in 2001. I walked into this big warehouse in Chelsea, huge space. I remember going like – I'd come from a staff of 15 at a magazine in Sydney. I remember thinking, what do you all do? Like, what do these people do? And they had so much money. But I remember when this was actually really funny. I went to do, I started sort of wrangling celebs and actors and all that stuff, and I went to a shoot, like a Young Hollywood, emerging Young Hollywood shoot.

18:53Heard of those? In L.A. And it was the photographer Melvin Sokolski, very known in the 60s, and this concept was Young Hollywood Emerges, right? But what they were emerging from was ostrich eggs. So there was the ostrich eggs over here being still-lifed or whatever. And then there was the actors over here. And I remember getting a call from someone at talk and saying there's an all-hands meeting. An all-hands meeting always sounds like a big hug or a kumbaya, but you're always getting fired. You're just all hands out. I go to the parking lot and it's like, okay, now they're closing it down, blah, blah, blah.

19:36Okay, I open the door to the studio and there's the actor Gabriel Mucked from Suits. Oh, yes. And he's oiled. Sure. Coming out of the egg. They never came out of the egg because the magazine closed down. So I was like, eat the catering, make phone calls, whatever else you need to do. So that was my adventure with Talk Magazine. We would all see Harvey around socially for years after that. And I wouldn't say I was his number one fan. And how did InStyle happen? So I worked before InStyle. Christina, my mate from the fashion show, we worked together for about eight years at Harper's Bazaar. So we worked for Glenda Bailey, who I know is a legend here.

20:15And so really got feet wet there. I did a lot of huge, like, sort of celebrity wrangling, creative direction, all these mad concepts, all this crazy stuff. And really tough, but really bold. And you had to, Glenda would always call it a coup. I need a coup. But she always wanted to get attention, attention, attention. And at the time, like, the best press would be, like, getting, like, page six in your post or whatever. And so that really formed me and certainly her. But, yeah, cut to – I was there for 11 years. Cut to 2016. And then the editor of InStyle left and then I got sort of scoped for that by Time Inc., which was once a very storied, you know, media company.

20:58They called me up and I went through a bit of executive speed dating. did some sort of memo on like apple docs or something i know i did the most old school thing i remember sitting in my pajamas just for a full day and whenever i'm writing something i'll sit there and almost like atrophy just to like get the thing done sent my memo off and uh yeah they hired me in august 2016 i remember being like oh i finally got the the story job that we'd been so programmed to want and i was excited to get it but it was funny I was again I'd been working in New York for so long and I was like okay awesome I've gotten it but it wasn't like oh here's the top of my Christmas tree you know and in style at the time was a very sort of stately here's how to match your pants with your belt you know what I mean or here's here's Barbra Streisand at home kind of kind of thing and very Hollywood and had a huge launch in the 90s and it used to be this thick and all that kind of stuff and I certainly very deliberately kind of kicked you in the ass.

22:00Yeah, your covers were knocked out. I just didn't mess around because it was like, but especially like, I mean, I started in August. Trump was elected for the first term in November. Oh, yeah, of course. Oh, my God. So there was all of that going on, you know, and then we came into COVID, Black Lives Matter, all this racial stuff, all of this. It was a wild time. It was no, oh, I'm going around in my town car to the Ritz, You know, it was particularly, it was awesome, but it was very challenging. And you had to do stuff where, which got attention, but attention for the right reasons. It's not just like, oh, I got Angelina Jolie.

22:41It'd be like, here's a worthwhile person who has something to say. Yeah. Can maybe make the people at home feel better and feel, and I always used to say the slogan for the magazine was everybody's in. Because it was like, I don't want, I understand that people like famous people in pretty dresses and so do I, but they're not better than you or above you. You're in this same thing together. So it was very much my proposition to appreciate and glorify everyone who deserved it on the same level. And was part of that to try with all the way that the world felt quite unsettled to reach your, you know, to comfort?

23:19Yeah, it was like you've got, and I wanted people to, who read, you know, so many times you would read a magazine and you would feel worse about yourself, right? You had the right body or the right garden or the right boyfriend or the right genes, you know what I mean? And I always hated that. I wanted a woman to feel better when she read the magazine and not worse, just regardless of whatever times we were living in, because I remember that feeling, especially as a teenager or whatever that sort of stuff. I should be, I must, I need. And, oh, if you want to buy these things, that's nice, but you don't need these things to be functional.

23:51But yeah, but it did become more important because of the challenges of 2020 and onward from that when everyone was literally at home, didn't know what they were doing for themselves. And they're not sure when their life was going to begin again. Can I also just say, I think, you know, this feels like a time, obviously Harper's Bazaar, you laid an amazing foundation. Because you laid it out. Here you laid an ostrich. A gorgeous thing. An email. Yeah. But it feels like in style was really you coming into your own. You had free reign to be who you wanted to be and everybody loved it. Yeah. It was funny because I worked for three different publishers through that time and it was very – like Time Inc.

24:41died. And then we were bought by a place called Meredith, which was literally a bunch of conservative men from like Des Moines who were like all were like sort of Trumpy, but I sort of liked them because they were like very straightforward and they loved me because I would like host like the Christmas Ugly Sweater Party and I knew famous people. So they were all like, oh, we love her. But they did kind of like, I had one boss and he always said to me, do you know Rebel Wilson? Yeah? It was like testing you. Okay. Yes, yes, I do. Yeah, she's probably my cousin. Anyway, but no, they did because the time, it was such an interesting time.

25:17The time sort of demanded it a little bit. You couldn't be passive. Yes. You had to have a point of view, and if you didn't, you sort of died. And I, you know, I started something called Badass Women, and I remember them going, like, the advertising book. Badass? Can't we call them groundbreakers or this is or that? I was like, how's that like a defibrillator? Like, no, ass. Like, let's put the word ass on the cover of a magazine. And I put Serena Williams was our first one on there. And I think that's just a little bit of a theme of women doing cool shit and being celebrated for and owning it.

25:52And then finding other women in that sphere, whether you're a celebrity or an astronaut or a politician or an activist or whatever you were. And I would, one of my favorite things I would do would have these badass dinners and I would get them all and stir them up into like a little chili, you know. And we would all end up in some sort of wine-soaked pile at the end of the night and everyone would make friends. Badass women like love each other, right? Because they're all badass. They have something in common. want everyone wants community yeah and everyone wants to be interested and stimulated and and have a bit of shine to be appreciated and so that was really really you know um an important platform for me uh was that something i've always appreciated and again another if i was going to back back into my teen years yeah what i've foisted myself out into the world to meet these sorts of people i mean when you look at um your time there probably what was like along that campaign what would be your most proudest achievement?

26:49I think that I was able to do kind of really punk things. Like I put like Dr. Fauci, the COVID on the cover. Yes. In like a pair of sunglasses. Your covers were like unique. I just did. I did a Biden cover. I did an Obama cover. Yeah. I did a wonderful cover right at the beginning of COVID. There's a very famous picture from the 50s of all these women standing in windows. And at the beginning of COVID, I was like, oh, we're going to need to feel like we're together even if we're not. And we reenacted that picture with all these people that worked in sort of an artist building in Brooklyn. And we put them all in their particular outfits.

27:29And it was, again, like we're together even though we're not. So we were able to do pretty bold, high concept stuff. And it wasn't just like, okay, here's the actress in the Louis Vuitton dress because we need the ad revenue. Because that always bored me to shit. yes like big time I didn't have a lot of patience um for the economy of magazines to honest with you because I just felt like a lot of it was so fashion can be really old-fashioned and you have to sort of subscribe to certain things and people and company and behaviors and I was always like it's just good in style like do you want to buy in or not I don't have to like hump your leg to do yeah and in fashion there is um there is a kind of value added to these things that you want it's like people aspire to have these expensive things fashion literally judges you on where you sit it's so dumb you know and you can let yourself fall for that you know but I think one thing that I think spared me is again being like, well, I'm not dumb.

28:34And sort of in an industry that at its best is the greatest and most beautiful, most inspiring and bringing to tears. At its worst, it's ridiculous and stupid and pretentious. And you should give it not even a minute of your time. So somewhere in between there, you've got to get the measure, right? And I was like, I think I'm a bit smarter than a lot of this. So I'm not going to buy into a lot of that. You know what I mean? I'm going to try and keep myself a little bit over here. And we're all not, like, above it all. I'm not sitting there on my high horse going, like, oh, of course I wanted the shoes or the jacket or all that kind of stuff.

29:09But not to that crazy extent where I lost myself into the idea of what I was supposed to be. Honey! Yes! Come sit. How are you? Good, how are you? It's for nature's. What's this? This is just a little thank you from our team, just to say thanks so much for amazing you at the beginning again. Oh my God, this is amazing. Have you loaded all the pictures onto here? Yep. I love you so much. This is the best present ever. Aura's our new sponsors and we love you, Aura, because they bring such joy, these frames. I've literally got them for everybody. You've got Christmas presents. Oh yeah, all my Christmas presents are sorted.

29:45Sorted. She's sorted. What you do is you can get the photos from your camera and you can just send them to any frame that's in the app. You can literally, right in that moment, send the pictures or send that memory amazing christmas gift idea it's so good right now is a brilliant brilliant time to buy because aura frames is having their black friday cyber monday sale yay and that means you can get 45 pounds off this frame all you have to do is visit aura frames.co.uk and use the promo code davina at checkout so that's aura a u r a frames.co.uk and terms and conditions apply. Prepare for lots of happy tears.