“You’re Fired” – Now What? Career Advice, Layoff Stories & How To Build Confidence | SheerLuxe Conversations

0:00Charlotte Collins:You're listening to the Shearlax Conversations podcast. Whether it's the success story behind a household name business, a deep dive into women's health issues, a long chat with some of the industry's biggest names, it's the podcast that keeps you in the know on the most important conversations today. Do make sure to subscribe if you like what you hear.

0:17Charlotte Collins:on today's cheerlikes podcast i am joined by two legends of the publishing and media world they are here to talk all about their new book all the cool girls get fired which has some anecdotes from some seriously impressive names i mean oprah says it best the setback is a setup the advice that you really need to hear if you have just been let go we are very good at our jobs we're in our and in our roles and we lost our jobs and now those two things can exist together and how owning being let go is the fastest way to recover here's what we're doing just like yes that's typical and i said we're going to take a picture of ourselves we're going to look so cute and we're going to caption it all the cool girls get fired so give it a listen and please do subscribe and enjoy

1:10Charlotte Collins:Welcome to the Chillax Podcast with me, Charlotte Collins. This week is something a little bit different. I am in conversation with two legends of the fashion and media industries, Laura Brown and Christina O 'Neill. Hello. To talk about their new book, All the Cool Girls Get Fired. I have quite a sycophantic additional paragraph here, which I mean, I'll read, but just bear with, okay? It says, it's sharp, funny and refreshingly honest. Exploring success, reinvention and what happens when life forces you to start again. we chat about their incredible careers how the book came to life and the lessons they've learned along the way oh welcome both and the friends we've made along the way super phantic but but accurate but very accurate this is the book what a cool book what a cool book i love it it's got cool written thank you it really does we will get into being fired and and that chat but but a bit of background to start with about both of you can you just give me like a potted cv where you got to before you got fired sure i mean actually it's funny because i moved to new york on um september the 4th 2001 and i actually met christina at a fashion show the mark jacobs show on september the 10th 2001 side note what uh what a week to move to new york i know yeah i was it was that wasn't it anyway and so it was interesting because we were similar in age and sort of and we came up sort of together but distinctly apart in magazines so yeah i'd been in magazines in and I moved to New York with my two bags and a dream.

2:34And yes, September 11th happened. And I worked at New York Post for a minute and then I worked at the E.O. Fated Talk magazine for Tina Brown and Harvey Weinstein, heady days. And then W Magazine details. And then I spent 11 years at Harper's Bazaar where Christina actually was working. And we were there for about seven or eight years together. And then for me, I left Bazaar and we're a bit backwards in our chronology now, But I have to become editor-in-chief of InStyle magazine in 2016. And we're there for how many years? Five and a bit. Christina? And Christina was? Yeah, so I started in media in New York in 1998, which was when I graduated from college and worked at Time Out New York, which was going very strong back in the day before the internet.

3:23Computers. And New York magazine landed at Harper's Bazaar, which is where I was working the night. I met Laura at that Marc Jacobs show, stayed there for 12 years. And then in 2013, went to late 2012, went to the Wall Street Journal magazine. And what about now?

3:43Charlotte Collins:We'll get to the firing chapter. What are you both up to these days? Just for context. I run my own company called LB Media, which is basically LB in the media. And I work across fashion entertainment, nonprofit, trying to sort of leverage. the entertainment and style community to be helpful in the global community rather than just selling bags which I did a lot of nothing wrong with selling love a bag got plenty and I work at Sotheby's I'm the head of media and I relaunched their magazine about a year ago a year ago now and yeah so I'm almost two years into the job there she's gainfully employed I just got my 401k back.

4:26Charlotte Collins:Well, we were talking about... Oh yeah, what's a 401k in the UK? You call it like super anyway? Is that what you say? Is that what you get when you're fired? They invest in your retirement. Oh, that's just called a pension contribution. Pension. Yeah. Pension. Pension contribution. You sound so old, so early. You both came up in like the absolute kind of glory days of publishing in New York. I mean, that is the real... As somebody who listens to Tina Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries like on repeat as a comfort listen. I mean, that is really the heyday of it. Can you paint a bit? Hers was. Well, okay.

4:57Maybe for Tina Brown. Yeah. We never worked at Condé Nast. Never worked at Condé Nast. Never had a townhouse. I did work for Tina Brown briefly for six weeks at Talk Magazine, which then closed down. It was sort of, we were at like the fabulous sort of death gasp of that era. The fabulous funeral. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, you know, of course, it was still very glamorous, you know, super creative. but it wasn't those sort of heady days of the the car idling you know or the or the free mortgages or all of those kind of things we never were always like hearst or time ink or somewhere that

5:32Charlotte Collins:was not condensed okay notice slight difference but paint a picture of what the time was like okay you weren't getting you weren't getting mortgages paid for but what what do you remember about the 90s it was pre-social media yeah so i mean the editors really were the kind of original influencers yeah um certainly the editors and chiefs and the creative directors and the fashion stylists who sort of ruled the industry at that time but it was such a you know wonderful period because feverish really everyone was running around and wanting to see and be and do and three things a night from a fashion show to an opening to everything especially also our ages at the time we would have been like we had energy back then 20s or whatever and it was like yeah it was optimistic and yeah it was it was it was at that sort of moment where everything was sort of curated and you wanted to be in all these places and was like full hype sex in the city era like all of those kind of like um sort of mythological parts of new york that a lot of us grew up watching um we certainly lived that uh for a time even though you know the the reality of working and paying your rent and everything is you know grounded a lot of that but we did have that kind of cinematic experience and again because we were young and a little starry-eyed about it too which helps yeah i want to talk about the getting fired piece but but a bit of what yeah i know believe it or not we got fired yeah turns out i mean that sounds bad you're cool girls though it means it turns out that means you're cool let's kind of go back a bit because you're you're obviously talking from experiences of being fired from major roles right this is kind of at your the peak of your career what about your experiences before that and you know in that the kind of illustrious cvs that you both just sort of listed off what was your experience of of the things that you document a bit in this book, you know, of the hiring, the firing.

7:15Do you feel like you, you know, what was your experience?

7:18Charlotte Collins:Were you fired before in more junior roles? Yeah, I'm a bit of a death knell. I've been fired twice before. Once from Australia. Well, not fired. Things literally closed down. But same diff. There was a magazine, my first magazine job in Australia called Australian Family. Australian Family closed down. That was a bit of a bugger. And also, as did Talk. And I had just arrived. and I remember I was on a shoot with like oiled up actors with this amazing photographer called Melvin Sikolsky who was very famous and he did all those pictures of the women floating on the orbs in the sand. So the idea, this is talk, this is hilarious, it was about young Hollywood and so the idea was that young actors were going to be photoshopped emerging from eggs.

8:01Sure. So there was like ostrich eggs in one corner and oiled up actors in the other corner. And I remember I got a phone call saying the magazine's closed down.

8:11Charlotte Collins:And I remember walking back into the room and there was Gabrielle Macht from the show Suits on a plinth going, emerging. And I had to go, I'm sorry, you're not emerging today. We're closed. So that is, yeah, two. So I'm actually three for three. Okay. Three for three. That's the experience. Yeah, I had not been fired before. You know, we also came up at a time when you could work in a place for, you know, a really long stint. And especially when you start at the bottom, right? So the job I left Harper's Bazaar, you know, I was number two on the masthead at that point. But when I started, I was maybe number, you know, 42.

8:48So in the, you know, ensuing years, it was really, you know, kind of working my way up. And so it wasn't so much about moving titles as much, but you worked within an organization and, you know, you stayed for the long haul. I think that's, you know, changed dramatically now. So, you know, now, you know, we say in the book, like, no one can really follow a resume like they used to. It's not the sort of like linear, you know, every two years, you know, you're changing. You know, if that happened in the old days, someone would be like, what's wrong? Why does she have so many like different spots on her resume?

9:23Whereas, you know, now I think that's... We would stick around. Yeah, we stuck around. Because there wasn't, things weren't changing so rapidly for a while. Yeah. And they all changed all at once.

9:32Charlotte Collins:Is that why you think it's changed? Because the landscape is changing? Oh, yeah. I mean, in the media landscape, I mean, I think we were a bellwether for so many other industries in the US, which is being decimated by layoffs now. And I know the same is happening in the UK, but it's just, it's hundreds upon thousands of people. Media, you know, it started, you know, happening with the advent of social and digital and the advertising model changing and tech. And so, you know, the media sort of fracturing five or so years ago now, and it's still going. But what's interesting about it is, to Christina's point, that say if an anchor got laid off from CNN, then there was sort of Substack or a podcast or whatever.

10:12So there's so many different ways to create and to be in the media now. And we think that that's exactly the same in the workplace generally. Like the individual can be the economy if you want to be an entrepreneur. Not everybody does. If someone wants a pension, you know. But it's a fascinating time because the traditional things have been falling away and there is a vulnerability with that. But if you kind of open your eyes to what might be available to you where you don't have to spend two years sitting in one place, where you don't have to feel so obliged, there can be more opportunity. But it's, you know, it's quite stark and you have to sometimes be shocked into that, like by getting fired.

10:47We were. Yeah.

10:49Charlotte Collins:We have a perception here in the UK about working in New York, in America, that it's quite easy to be fired there, right? Like in the movies? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of kind of legal framework here that protects employees, which are kind of the way we're led to believe is that that's not the case. So is it almost do you think there's almost a sort of mentality in American workplaces in New York in that kind of hustle culture that it is kind of inevitable at some point? Because I'm not sure that exists here. I mean, listen, I think if you're at the top of your field, certainly the lean anchors on a news program will have a contract.

11:25You know, they'll have an agreement with the workplace where whether they fill the duration of the contract, they are covered financially for whatever that looks like. But much further down the totem pole, you know, it does not look like that. And I would say that maybe 95 percent of American workers don't have any net or any security or guarantee that anyone is going to take care of them. And we have greater vulnerabilities with health care as well. So there's just, you are so much more vulnerable in losing your job here. You can go to the NHS, right? You know, in the United States, people oftentimes have to take jobs because it offers them health care because otherwise they can't afford to go to the doctor.

12:05Charlotte Collins:So there is a level of expectation kind of ingrained in the workforce? I don't think it's expectation, but I think that's just sort of ingrained in how the workplace, like that's just how it works. The best and the worst of it is like why people want to move to America all the opportunity, all the stuff, all the money, all the things you can make, like in the movies, you know. And the worst of it is you're out, you're out, you're out, you know. But it's unambiguous, I guess. You know, I think sometimes people go like, oh, you can't fire anyone in France. You know what I mean? And there's sometimes, you know, maybe the ideal is somewhere in between the two.

12:37You know, things are less, not as static and not as vulnerable.

12:41Charlotte Collins:Talk to me about getting fired. It was terrific. Both of you tell me your stories. I mean, and we're talking about the big fire, like the fire with a capital F, right? With a capital F. Yes, well, I'll go first because I was chronologically first, wasn't I? Yeah, in February 2022, myself, so at InStyle, I had worked for three different corporate owners. So Time Inc., which was dying when we walked in, and then someone called Meredith, which is a bunch of conservative guys from like Des Moines, Iowa, and then a company called Dot Dash. and Dot Dash bought us in November of 21 and then in February 2022 laid us all off on Zoom.

13:21And I'd been a bit, as they call it, dog out the window. I was sort of thinking of doing my own thing and registered my own business. And I was like, didn't think I was going to go then though.

13:29Charlotte Collins:And then one day we all get this, I got 20 minutes notice but then we all got called on to a, I don't know if you say this here, all hands meeting, which sounds like, yeah, it sounds like a kumbaya, like a hubby, you're always getting fired. And so my team of like 35 was asked to be on a Zoom and then they read, you know, the HRs, they're reading the script and we're closing down the print edition. And that was kind of that. And I remember I called my team back and it was like, I could get back on this Zoom right now. And I was attempted to be, well, I can say this here, Churchill. And basically said, you know, your value is yours.

14:09Your knowledge is yours. Everything you've done is yours. Don't you be proud of it. take it move on with it don't give these people power over you and don't let them take it away from you um which did end up in a way being spying for this book but we were but we were also like shocked we were like how do we download our contacts it was like one guy called brian who knew how to do it brian you know and we're so we're all sort of scrounging around with each other um trying to to give ourselves somewhere to land i guess and i i spent a lot and again because i thought i was going to work for myself i was i was absolutely shocked and i think the in a way I think shock is an armor um because I spent sort of less time on myself than I did with babies in my team and that sort of thing um but yeah and so that was and then I actually I had another little distraction because I went off to get married a couple of months later um but yeah and then I was like okay this is on me now isn't it and I have to my money last you know my payout lasts this long and then I have to pay for things I am now responsible for paying $2 ,000 worth of healthcare every month.

15:08And that sort of reality starts to hit you pretty hard. But yeah, cut to a bit over a year later. I got fired.

15:20And mine was sort of the opposite situation to Laura's where she was, you know, it was her and her entire team. I was singled out. It was one of one who got fired from my group. What had happened was there had been a regime change at the top of the masthead at the newspaper. And the new boss, you know, it had taken a beat to get, you know, time with her. And by the time I did, it had been, you know, about three months into her tenure. And so, you know, I prepared and prepared thinking I was going to go in and, you know, knock her socks off and show her all the things that we had accomplished in the 10 years and, you know, talk about the next 10.

15:54Unfortunately, that was not the case and she moved our meeting 10 minutes before from her office to the hr room got the

16:03Charlotte Collins:script got the boot can you talk a bit about the shame associated with that there's obviously you know i guess you're using the word fired as a blanket for yours i suppose describes redundancy more accurately we use the term fired because it's losing your job and you know and like you can spin it 10 ways till sunday um but uh someone was talking to me the other day fired is the best word because that's how it feels it's very harsh it's not like um oh i was let go that sounds like someone gave you a hug on the corner and put you on the bus you know it's like you can use every euphemism you want um to describe what happened to you but if you're obfuscating if you're spinning if you're bullshitting you know what i mean it's going to slow you down it's going to slow down your recovery and your and your search for for something else so we have never um used any other a word beside that because it certainly it also comes with um some ego for us um we we we are very good at our jobs we're we're in our and in our roles and we lost our jobs and now those two things can exist together and so the the entire point of this book you know is this shame situation shame is a choice and it's a choice that so many women make because what do you mean i i i lost my It must mean I'm bad.

17:23It must mean I couldn't do this, couldn't do that. Again, look around. In November 2025, there's an epidemic of layoffs. You're not even – they're not exclusive on this anymore. So if you take – if you're already knocked down, you're already a beetle on its back. You've got to – so your money, your income – and again, health insurance in our country, da-da-da-da-da. Why would you then – like it's like, you know those Disney cartoons when the anvil lands on the head and it's all like stars and birds? And then you pick up another big weight of shame and go, oh, I'll carry that around too. Why?

17:52Charlotte Collins:does you no favors which is all amazing advice how were you able to apply that to yourselves at the time yeah I was snapped into the realization pretty quickly because about four or five days after I was fired I went to an event a very sort of public industry event and I thought I was walking into this room literally wearing like a scarlet f and I thought everyone's head was gonna turn they were gonna wonder what I was doing there walk into the party you know see the first like a couple people and they're like, hey, how are you? Hey, how are you? Everyone's sort of caring about their business.

18:25And I realized that either no one knew or no one cared. And it sort of reset it instantly for me because it was such a reminder that it was in my head. And really what you carry with you is often self-created. And in that moment I was like, oh, right. Everyone's just self-absorbed and they only care about themselves or how my firing applies to them, right? Like Like, are they people who I employed who might be affected? You know, no one's actually caring about you. They're caring about how your situation impacts them. It's like, I'll do anything for a Game of Thrones example, but it's like no one's walking behind you on the street going, shame, shame.

19:07It's in your head. And again, in the context of the logic, which is what we really urge women and men to contextualize themselves in these situations too. And it's like especially like, what was it, Verizon or something we're looking at this morning had 20 ,000 layoffs. So if you're sitting there going, I must suck because I lost my job, there's 20 ,000 more of you there. And so again, the faster you own it, there's also a community there for you. And if you don't own it, you don't see that.

19:32Charlotte Collins:Yeah, which I suppose is why in my head there is that slight difference between when it's the en masse layoffs versus an individual redundancy. But I take your point that you can feel the same way regardless, right? I mean, I was amongst a group of several senior leadership positions at the journal that were all fired. But at the time, it wasn't like me and my team. It was more like me and sort of similarly leveled peers. But you were the only one who admitted it. But I was the only one who admitted it. And it wasn't until the day that rolled around when we had all exited that I realized that there were other people in the organization.

20:14because they just sort of went back to their desks and kept working and then left for personal reasons or whatever it was. Like weeks later. You know, weeks later. And carried that around. And it kind of blew my mind because there wasn't a day that I could have walked in and pretended, knowing that I had, you know, been told, like, goodbye. And I had about six weeks that I had to sort of stay to work through. And basically, if I had to walk in every day and just pretend and then one day be like, oh, I'm going to leave because I'm, you know, going to set up this other thing. Also, if you're lying about it, then who's going to help like pull you along, pull you forward?

20:52The word fired instantly signals to people that like you're in the market. You're looking for work. You're ready to go. You know, and you want to like talk about it, connect with people, you know, do these things. And if you're home pretending like everything's cool and you're leaving because you have, you know, for like personal reasons or other projects or, you know, whatever. It's so isolating. Yeah. It's so isolating to do that because you're sitting at home with your comfort duvet of lies. There's no real comfort in it because you're trying to maintain a sense of appearance, again, but for what?

21:26And so we just like – because it's so traumatic and there's so much vulnerability. So the faster you can just push yourself along into the new whatever that is for you, the ownership is the best way to do that.

21:39Charlotte Collins:So is that what you both did in terms of how you publicly We Instagrammed it, baby. You went straight in with the Instagram. Yeah, we went straight in. So when Christina was a bit over a year after me, I was in South Africa at the time when she first texted me. And where did you text me from again? The HR office. She was getting canned. I mean, talk about reflexes. You're like, excuse me, I should send a text one moment, please. Literally like, ah. As good friends do, I got back and we were going out for a drink. And I don't know if anyone's done that here. We did. Great. and on the way to the drink um i said to christina here's what we're doing she's like yes that's typical and i said we're going to take a picture of ourselves we're going to look so cute and we're going to caption it all the cool girls get fired love it and she was like okay okay and this is entirely sober to be fair and clear and then we did we after the drink we did post that because again it was like yeah we got fired yeah we're good come on and uh and we were greeted by this absolute deluge of responses from from women just that sort of cinematic bing bing bing bing on instagram of like oh my god you did oh i kind of i thought so oh legends oh actually me too all these sort of reactions and as we were processing that sort of the night before but the next morning uh christina called me and said this is a book and at the time was pressure enough to also this is two and a half years ago um pressure enough to even see the layoffs that were starting around us even then and and to know that there were people like us this was a book that we needed uh and there were people like us who needed it too even then even when this was you know um a couple of weeks after she'd got canned um recognize that yeah there's so much you don't know about getting fired and when you're in it and you're so vulnerable and you're so overwhelmed You know, I just wanted almost like a checklist of all the things that I wanted to make sure that, A, you're engaging with your soon-to-be former employer about.

23:37So, you know, whether that's, you know, your severance package or, you know, your health care package or whatever those things look like. Plus, you know, all the things that you probably have never really had to think about. And so I just wanted a list. I couldn't find all the information that we ended up putting in this book in one place. And so for all of our, you know, highly skilled, you know, decades in media, you know, I was like Googling things like for, you know, it was kind of shocking. No one teaches you this stuff, right? No. That's what this book is. It's basically, you know, 50 % service manual of, you know, just really the brass tacks and things you must know when you're, you know, leaving a work situation.