When my alarm went off at 3:15 a.m. one Friday in February, I had no idea it would become the day that it did. It began like every other one of my mornings as co-host of ‘Breakfast Television’ — early — and as I went through my well-honed pre-show routine, my mind was focused on the guests we had lined up, the interviews I would be hosting and the discussion prep on deck before show open.
Putting together four hours of live television every day requires a stamina that will always and forever elicit respect from me for those who do it. It’s equal parts exhausting and exhilarating, it’s a privilege that I took very seriously, it’s an audience I felt deeply connected to, it’s a job I loved. By 10:45 a.m., I had been fired.
The weeks that followed were a mixed bag of hard, weird and wonderful. It was a revealing pocket of time I never expected to have: a perspective shift, a life flip, a love fest and a deep loss. I heard from so many people, many of them women who were going through the same thing.
One morning, after a walk with my dog, Lucy, I was sitting on my front porch sipping coffee and scrolling Instagram when my algorithm served me up a book cover that made me spit out my sip. It was titled “All The Cool Girls Get Fired.” Amen, sister. Those six words sum up what can be a pretty gnarly experience with just the right twist. Own it, and onwards! It felt like a rally cry, a way through.
In that instant, I knew I wanted to talk to the authors — Laura Brown, former editor in chief of InStyle, and Kristina O’Neill, former editor-in-chief of WSJ Magazine — and create a conversation in Canada that offers women a place to start, if and when they find themselves in this position.
Their book, out as of Oct. 14, serves as both information and inspiration. There’s useful advice relating to finance, mental health and networking alongside other women’s “I got fired” stories including Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric and Carol Burnett. A very cool club indeed.
First of all, thank you for writing this book. It is useful, it is honest, it is funny and it allows the reader to own their experience. So I’m going to get you to follow your own advice, and tell me out loud, how did you get fired?
Laura Brown: “I was about to run out somewhere — I remember having my sneakers on — and then I got this call from my boss. I pick up, and she’s on with an HR professional. They give me the news that InStyle print would be folding and become digital only. It was 2022, still coming out of COVID. Being fired in your living room is actually sort of odd.
I had a heady 20 minutes’ notice before they called an all hands with my team. We were all given the same message. Everyone was in varying degrees of shock. After that happened, I got everybody back on Zoom, and said, ‘All right, this happened, we’re going to be fine, let’s help each other, this is not an indictment on anyone’s skills.’
Then I sat back on the edge of my bed with my sneakers still on and just … bing, bing, bing; texts, DMs in the hundreds. We were publicly billboard-fired, like you, so everyone knew about it much quicker than, say, if someone had been privately fired from a job. But the blessing of that was all these messages. It’s like reading beautiful eulogies about yourself, but you’re still alive. It’s really nice, and I’m sure, Meredith, you got that too. Kristina’s was a little bit different.”
Kristina O’Neill: “Yeah, I was one of one. It was about a year later, in 2023. The editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal had been replaced, and I was one of his direct reports, and the woman who came and took over had started in February. It was late April, it was kind of odd that I hadn’t had any time with her. We finally had a big meeting on the books, which was set to take place in her office. I had prepared PowerPoints and printouts; I was ready to go up and razzle-dazzle her with everything we had built in the 10 years that I had been there, and everything we still wanted to do. About 10 minutes before the meeting started, the room location changed to HR. I knew. I was standing with a group of my colleagues, and I literally said to them, ‘Be right back, I’m gonna go get fired.’ It was the first and last time I met the new editor. I texted Laura underneath the table, and I said, ‘I’m getting the boot, call me.’”
When did you know that you wanted to turn what had happened to you both into a book?
L.B.: “I said to Kristina, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do, we’re going to take a picture of ourselves, we’re going to look so cute, and we are captioning it: all the cool girls get fired.’ She went, OK, and so we did. We posted it because we were really good — are really good — at our jobs, and we got fired. That’s it. The minute we posted it that evening, we were greeted by an absolute deluge from women going … ‘Damn, you said it!’ Oh, a legend!’ ‘Oh, that kind of happened to me, too.’ All visceral reactions to the most uncommon thing, which was women saying, This happened to me, and not spinning, obfuscating or shrinking away from it.”
K.O.: “The next morning, I called Laura, and I was like, ‘This is a book.’ She had an agent, thankfully, who really loved it from the second we conceived it. Less than a month later, we were sitting on my parents’ sofa at my dad’s 70th birthday party, writing the proposal.”
One of the ideas I’ve found comfort in is that when change happens, you can change. How did leaning into change help you through it?
K.O.: “When you’re in a job, you’re never sitting there being like, ‘Do I like this?’ You’re not reflecting. You’re just going from A to B, you’re doing. I think I never gave myself enough credit for being as entrepreneurial as I am. If you’d told me two years ago I’d be working for Sotheby’s, the oldest auction house in the world, I would have told you, you were mad. I think this book is an example of that entrepreneurship. And I have other interests; I have time to be a soccer mom. There are things I never really allowed myself to explore because I was just, like, head down, nose to the grindstone. My relationship to work has changed.”
Most of us probably never think about how much personal value and identity we have attached to work.
L.B.: “You’ve just got to make sure you’ve got insurance. You’ve got to make sure that you’re insured in other things you do, other passions you have, your family, your friends, whatever it is — so that it’s not all stacked into this one thing that can be taken away from you.”
Let’s talk about the role that shame and stigma can play, especially for women who get fired.
K.O.: “When you think about Mike Bloomberg and Steve Jobs, these titans of industry, getting fired is the thing in their biography that they cite as unlocking all of the power and creativity and innovation that came next. There’s not a single woman [with that narrative]. We tried [to find it] — the equivalent doesn’t exist! That’s crazy that we’re not raising the next generation to have women on the vision board who suffered a setback and overcame it. Hopefully now Oprah will be on that Mount Rushmore, because she does share her story with us in the book.”
L.B.: “It lightened the weight because we were so upfront about it, but of course so many women aren’t, and for every reason, we understand that. The workplace was a male construct: All of those titles, CEO, CFO, it’s all military, it’s all chief, chief, chief. We only got the vote 100 years ago. We do carry that with us, whether or not we feel it at the time. A lot of that shame or feeling of failure is because you climbed up to that rung where you are hosting a national show, or editing a magazine, or whatever profession, and when you get pushed off it, you’re like, ‘Are you serious? It took me so long [to get here].’”
K.O.: “I think if you’re spinning a story, then you have to keep up the appearance of the story. It makes it really hard. It also means that no one knows you’re looking for work, that you need a hand, a hug, or whatever. So the more you put it out there, I do think the knock-on effects can only be positive.”
It feels scary, but it’s the quickest way through. It’s the hardest, easiest thing to do. What is your advice on how to answer the inevitable question: “What’s next?”
L.B.: “Don’t be defensive. You can say, ‘You know what, I’m in between, I’m working it out, I’m taking a minute.’ That’s honesty. I saw a lady the other night who shall remain nameless, but she was a fashion lady and we knew she got fired, and she just came at me with, ‘I didn’t get fired.’ She started doing this entire bulls—t press release at me. It just showcased her insecurity. I was like, this is what this book is for. You should be able to just be straightforward and people will go ‘All right, good for you.’”
On page 272, you sum it up pretty perfectly: Getting fired sucks but sometimes you’ve got to lose the job to find your life.
K.O.: “It does suck, and we’re not here to sugar-coat it, but we’re also not here to lie about it. The truth is that if you aren’t sometimes forced to take a step back, you’re not going to step forward. Oprah says it really well in the book: The setback is the set up. You have to see this as an opportunity.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
