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If you’ve ever been fired, Laura Brown and Kristina O’Neill want you to know you’re not alone. The former top editors of InStyle and WSJ Magazine, respectively, have released their new book All The Cool Girls Get Fired, which is filled with advice they wish they’d had when dealing with job loss. Powerful women including Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Jamie Lee Curtis, and more also share their own firing stories in the tome, proving that setbacks aren’t forever—and can even lead to future success. At their book launch party, we caught up with Brown and O’Neill on their friendship, getting fired, and more.
Tell us how you decided to write this book together.
Laura: We got fired 14 months after each other. Kris was after me, and when she when she got fired she texted me from HR, like, “I’m getting canned. I’m getting the boot. Call me when you’re up.” I was in South Africa, actually, and I just called her. When you’re fired, you’re in shock and need some guidance. I was like, “Do you have a lawyer? Do you have this, do you have that?,” as friends do. I got back to town, I met her for a drink. I remember I was so jet-lagged, but I was like, “I must see my friend!” On the way to the drink, I was like, “Here’s what we’re doing.” She was like, “What?” I said, “We’re taking a picture for Instagram. We’re going to look so cute, and we’re captioning it ‘All the cool girls get fired.’” We did that, order, posted it that night, and were greeted by an absolute deluge of comments on the post of women going, “Oh my god, legends. Well, that happened to me.” We just knew we’d uncorked something, or opened some psychological door with the shame and issues that women have—and men sometimes have—about losing their job. The next morning, Christina called me and said, “This is a book.” And I was like, “I know.”
Kristina: We posted a post on Instagram right after I got fired, that Laura titled “All the coolest girls get fired.” There was an amazing response to it. We realized we had really struck a nerve with so many women who either had identified with the vocabulary, i.e., the word “fired,” or hadn’t acknowledged that something similar had happened to them before. We had opened the floodgates for people to be able to talk about something that, historically, has been a bit of a taboo, shameful subject.
Kristina O’Neill and Laura Brown (Thomas McCarty)
How did you two become friends?
Laura: We met at the Marc Jacobs show on September 10, 2001. I’d been in New York for six days. I’d moved from Sydney. I was absolutely dazzled by where I’d ended up. I couldn’t believe it! Everyone was famous, it was a Sex and City year. Everyone was a supermodel. I was just dying. My friend Libby Callaway, who was working at The New York Post at the time, introduced me to Kristina. She says I thought she was judging me, and she thought I talked too much, and nothing has changed 25 years later. We became friends then, but became dearer friends in 2005 when I started at Harper’s Bazaar, where she already was. We worked at Bazaar together for seven years, and then she left to go to WSJ in 2012. I started at InStyle in 2016.
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- Laura Brown
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- Kristina O’Neill
What do you remember about the day you were fired?
Laura: We got fired on Zoom. We got fired on Zoom, me and my whole team. I was just sitting in my apartment, though, so I went from the dining table to the bed.
Kristina: It was the first time I was supposed to meet with my new boss. I had done a whole presentation. I was ready and gunning for this meeting. But unfortunately, right before, she moved the meeting from her office to HR. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go through with that presentation.
Kristina O’Neill and Laura Brown (Courtesy of Argent)
How did you cope with that experience?
Laura: My husband and I were getting married two months later, so I actually had a very helpful distraction. I was like, “Great, I’m not working. I’m going to go to Hawaii.” Of course, it was like, “Where’s the money after the wedding?” I did have the short-term distraction, but I sat with it and waited because I knew I didn’t want to work for anybody ever again. I knew that very, very clearly, so I just sat with it and waited for people to call me. Now, I obviously run my own [LB Media], but I also work along with developing the platform that is this book. I work with (RED), the HIV nonprofit, so to be able to take whatever I’ve done in fashion, to work with global health, it’s really a thrill.
Kristina: Yeah. I mean, listen, it’s overwhelming, and there’s so much you don’t know when you get fired that you suddenly are having to research and kind of come to grips with, you know, the sort of process and the terminology and all the things and so, you know, everything in this book is what I wish it I had known when I when I got fired.
Kristina O’Neill, Glenda Bailey, and Laura Brown (Thomas McCarty)
How’s the book tour been going so far? You visited Oprah in her rose garden!
Laura: Oprah’s rose garden, where nothing bad happens! It’s really great, because we’re proud of what we’ve done, and we know it’s going to help a lot of people. We’ve heard from so many women, men, and whomever can be helped by this, saying, “I need this.” We’re giving them a roadmap, the book that we wish we had when we got fired. We didn’t know how to do any of this. We didn’t know how to get a lawyer. We didn’t know all sorts of stuff. We thought, “We’re really privileged women—so, for us to feel helpless?” Everyone feels helpless, and you feel very alone and isolated. Number one, you have to remember there’s a community there for you. Number two, how to address all the practical things that you really need to deal with in the first moment after being fired, to get your power back, get your agency back. We layered in stories with very successful women who you’d never think had a bad day at one point, felt like you, were fired on the couch. Their success also is a reminder that they were like you, and also fires up your dreams. Oprah was on the couch. Oprah couldn’t tell her dad. Oprah was worried about money. Allow yourself to see it as the springboard to something so much bigger.
Kristina O’Neill and Laura Brown (Thomas McCarty)
What is one thing that you were somebody had told you when you found out you got hired, what’s one thing you would someone had told you?
Laura: It’s one thing that I would tell other people, too: it’s going to be okay.
Kristina: There’s tons of advice in the book, but I’d tell you It’s all going to be okay.
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