How to Let Go after Being Let Go with Oprah and authors Laura Brown & Kristina O’Neill

I actually said to the journal manager, is this an April Fool's joke? And he goes, no, we're taking you off of the news. Gail King was a production assistant at the time. I was the 6 o'clock co-anchor. And I went back downstairs and I go,

meet me in the bathroom now. OK, everybody. Hi, I'm so glad you all are here. And I know life is busy. So I thank you all for spending your time with us on the Oprah podcast where every week We're diving into topics that we hear are top of mind for so many of you watching and listening and on this episode

whoa, we're talking about something that is just so timely about the Seismic shift that millions of you are facing in the job market. These days, nobody is safe. Don't care where you are. You're not safe from the stress of thinking you may be let go. You may be laid off or experience a reduction in force, rifts as your company may call them,

downsizing, restructuring, reorgs, all the corporate buzzwords and euphemisms that, you know, people use. But let's face it, no matter what it's called, what it feels like is getting fired. And for women, it just hits differently. And oftentimes it feels like shame. And this is a really important conversation that rarely

gets attention. So I'm so happy to welcome to the Tea House the authors of a new book, Working Women Need Right Now. It's called, All the Cool Girls Get Fired. All the cool girls get fired. When you say it, you have to say it like that. All the cool girls get fired. Powerhouse executives, Laura Brown and Christina O'Neil

have decades of experience in fashion and media. The two friends spent 10 years working together at Harper's Bazaar. Christina then rose to editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal magazine. Later, Laura became editor-in-chief of InStyle magazine. In 2022, Laura was stunned when she was asked to step down. 14 months later, Christina was also let go.

10 minutes before the meeting, changed from her office to the HR room. So I knew instantly after 10 years, my time was up.

While out for a drink to commiserate, Laura and Christina posted a photo on Laura's Instagram with the caption, all the coolest girls get fired.

We posted it that night because, and there was no second guessing. There was no ambiguity because it was like, we were great at our jobs. We got fired.

Their posts hit a nerve and inspired them to write a book.

It was this deluge immediately from women going, Oh wow, you said it? Oh, me too.

All the cool girls get fired is a roadmap for rebuilding your career and figuring out who you really are without your job title.

In all of my time at CNN, I would make phone calls and be CNN's Brooke Baldwin. And then all of a sudden, record scratch. I'm just making a phone call and I'm just Brooke? And I had to have a real sort of come to Jesus with who that person is.

♪♪

Laura Brown.

Hello, thank you for having us.

And Christina O'Neil. Welcome.

Thank you.

So I want to start by hearing what happened to you cool girls, to each of you. You were at different popular magazines, but both of you were at the peaks of your careers. You had the titles. And what happened?

Do you want to go chronologically? Cause I was first. Not to brag, I was first. Yes, I ran InStyle Magazine and all the way through COVID, you know, it was a really challenging time. As an editor, we worked for three different companies

during the time at the same magazine. You're on our cover seven years ago. And in early 2022, I got a call from my immediate boss. And I was like, hi, and it was also, it was also an HR professional on the phone. And I was given 20 minutes notice that in the in style print side is what they referred to it was being shut down. So 20 minutes later, myself and my entire team were on a Zoom, they call it like an all-hands meeting, and we were laid off on

Zoom. And that was that, and it was like, okay, you're going to get your paperwork, you're going to get your HR contacts, roll up your stuff, and you're done. Had you had any warning, any signs before? I mean, I think, yes, I think that, well, I was a bit head out the window. I was looking to do my own thing. But yes, my managing editor one day said, Laura, we don't have a budget. But I was, no, I was like, because we'd been through so much change and coming through COVID and all of those huge seismic cultural things.

We've been rolling with things so much. So this just seemed like another thing to roll with. And our rolling stopped on that morning when we were all laid off. And immediately after that, we all just got back on.

Well, always there's a sign if HR is on the call.

With HR, if an HR professional is on the call, because there's always a script, you know, and because they've got to do all the legal stuff and the language has to be correct. And so we got through that, but yeah, I sort of got everybody back on a Zoom right after. And I was like, okay, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?

Because it was 35 people.

35 people. Yeah. Christina, how about you?

I was one of one.

One of one. One of one.

Special.

There was a regime change at the top of the masthead at the Wall Street Journal at the beginning of 2023. the editor-in-chief of the newspaper was replaced, who was my direct boss. And the new woman who came in, you know, started in February, February went by, March went by, and I couldn't get a meeting with her. So in late April, I finally got the meeting. Ten minutes before, the meeting changed from her office

to the HR room.

Whoa.

So I knew instantly that after ten years, my time was up.

But you hadn't had any indication before. So the fact that you're going to HR, would you think? I would think, well, this isn't about me. This must be about somebody else. Yes.

I had PowerPoints. I had printouts. I was ready. I was ready to knock her socks off. But unfortunately, I think her message to me was that, you know, she wanted to go into a different direction.

Yeah. And then she's, didn't she say that you can, you know, help create your own narrative?

Yeah.

And you said...

No. We are going to go and tell my team that you're firing me. And I don't know how I had the wherewithal in that moment, in that room, but I knew if I had to add a layer of complexity to this situation when I was...

Like, shaping the story.

Yeah, if I had to carry a lie in addition to carrying the shock and the, you know, devastation, I would never get through it.

Yeah. I think it's so good that you're using those words that a lot of women use throughout, all the cool girls get fired. It's shock at first and devastation. Cause I'll tell you all my story later. My story is in this book,

but I remember leaving the general manager's office being told, and I was just kind of numb. There is a kind of, you are in a state of disbelief. So tell us Laura, how the book title and the idea of this book came about.

And it came, what Christine was mentioning, from ownership. From owning what happened to us and being straightforward about it.

The book title, let me remind you, All the Cool Girls Get Fired.

So as cool girls do when they get fired or if they're into this, they tend to go to a bar. And I had just come back from a trip to South Africa and Christina had been fired and she'd actually texted me when I was in South Africa getting canned.

From under the table in the HR room.

Really?

Yes. And so I arrived back from South Africa, I was like, I've got to see my friend. And so we went to meet at a bar. Because remind us, how long had this happened to her? How long had it been since? Fourteen months between.

Okay.

Yeah. So I was February 2022 and you were end of April 23.

Okay.

So on the way down to the bar, I texted Christine and I was like, here's what we're going to do. And she's like, yes, that's our relationship basically. And I said, we're going to take a picture for Instagram, we're going to look super cute, and we're captioning it, all the cool girls get fired. And she went, okay. And we did it. And we posted it that night.

And there was no second guessing. There was no ambiguity, because it was like, we were great at our jobs. We got fired. This happened. This is honesty and this is ownership. And so, we flung it out on the internet and there was this deluge immediately from women

going, oh, wow, you said it? Oh, me too. Oh, damn. Like, there's kind of almost like a psychological door opening with women that we said. And honestly, there was some ego in it too. It was like we are good. We are good at what we do. This happened. It will happen to you.

It's happening to everyone right now. We're going to own it. And it's actually also the easiest way out because it cuts short all of this spin and narrative that so many women feel like they still have to do. Then you all decided, you decided then with the drinks? Oh, yeah. The next morning. To write a book? It was the next morning. Cut to our mutual bathrooms.

Yes. So I was hurriedly getting ready and I called Laura and I said, this is a book. I knew instantly that this was the messaging that we needed to put out into the world. Also, I think at that point, Laura was probably sick of me asking her questions. There's so much you don't know when you get fired. You know, I didn't know how to navigate Cobra. I didn't know if I needed a lawyer.

And then if I had a lawyer, or, you know, was I paying them, you know, the right amount, like all these things that sort of, you know, present themselves when you're suddenly let go. So we thought it was so important to, you know, combine that service element with the stories of the women who we had seen kind of immediately respond on Instagram.

So I think it's so smart what these women did. They have chapters with experts who offer practical step-by-step advice on what to do and what not to do once you're fired. It's just invaluable information that nobody ever tells you. So what do you want to say about that, Christina?

Well, it's the book we wish we had, you know?

It's the book I wish I had.

Thank you.

I thought, wow, if there had been this book, I wouldn't have felt so alone.

But in addition to all the emotions, you're sitting there Googling, like, 101 stuff that, thankfully, you know, now exists in one place. But that was really what we felt like was missing. And that inspiration, those women talking about what they'd been through and that opportunity to hopefully fire up some dreams.

And then you also have these personal interviews with women you call bad ass who've been fired at one time or Thanks, I'm one of the bad asses. But others, Lisa Kudrow and Tarana Burke and Jamie Lee Curtis and Katie Couric, to name just a few. Why did you want to incorporate other women besides yourselves?

Because your stories are strong.

It was very deliberate because when you're alone and on that couch and you've lost your job and you don't know where your money's coming from or you don't know if you have health care anymore and you're staring at your bank balance and you may be picking up a glass of wine or you're just staring at the window. Whether you have, guess breaking news, it's easier in life to have more resources than less.

But when you're fired from whatever context it is, you all feel the same. Yes. You feel terrible. So the important thing was to remind everyone, we specifically chose high profile, extremely successful, well-known women for this book because these women, including yourself, felt like that. When you were fired, you weren't here. You didn't have a rose garden, you know, and all of these women, none of these women did. So they were there on the couch. They

were crying. They felt alone. And look at them now.

And even if you have a rose garden, you're still going to feel pretty bad.

Yeah. Exactly. It's just not part of the legends that are told about women, right? It's part of the lore that Steve Jobs got fired. It's part of Mike Bloomberg's narrative that he was let go from Solomon Brothers. There aren't that many women out there who have acknowledged a setback that unlocked what came next for them. And we need to change that. We need to have more conversations with women so that other women, you know, can sort of see the, I mean, that's why we're so happy you're in the book.

This is the thing. Why is it that men seem to, or maybe they're just hiding behind it too, but they seem to be able to move on. Because I think, I love one of the quotes in the book, men are expected to be brave, but women are expected to be perfect.

Rish Masojani.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's who says that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Men are expected to be brave, but women are expected to be perfect. And because of that, women carry more shame shame with the firings than men do. Yeah. Men just seem to pick themselves up and keep moving on.

Also remember that the workplace in itself is a male construct. You know, men started working before we did. We only got the vote 100 years ago. Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, when we, one of our HR experts said, we were like, why does it hit harder? And she said, because it took us longer to get there.

Generationally, we do carry that. When we got up this little rung and we're pushed off, that we hit, it hits more harder. And that's again part of the book is like if you own it and you have a little bit of, I don't know, be male, be whatever that thing is. The sooner you own it, the sooner we change this culture,

we want more women to put up their hands. We would have done double the amount of stories in this book, but people still Women we know are still spinning it and it's like enough. It doesn't know one any good

Well, I think too when you have public jobs That everyone else knows and also when you have jobs like yourselves you get that editor-in-chief title you work for whatever that means and all that that means to the rest of the world. And you feel that there's a sense of embarrassment. I know for me, because for me it was being on the evening news and having had, this is when I was 22, and having had so much promotion about it that, you know, everybody in town was like, well, who is this girl coming to

Baltimore? And then I end up being a year later, less than a year later, removed from the evening news. And as I was saying, when I got called up, it was on April Fool's Day. So it was April 1st. Yeah. And I thought, oh, this is an April Fool's joke. I actually said to the journal manager, is this an April Fool's joke? And he goes, no, we're taking you off of, we're taking you off of the news. Gayle King was a production assistant at the time. I was the six o'clock co-anchor.

And I went back downstairs and I go, meet me in the bathroom now. And I told her that I've just been taken off the six o'clock news, but I still have to do the six o'clock news. And the embarrassment of everybody knowing it,

I think is very much like having to go back in the office when you have been the manager, director, you've been, or not, and everybody knowing

it. Oh, it's reputational. I mean, everyone has different levels of where the stress comes from. Financial, health, reputational, everyone. Tarana talks about that, you know. Yes. There's certain, whatever industry you're in, there is sometimes a status that comes with that, there's relationships that come with that,

there's comfort that comes with that, there's rituals that come with that. And you are yanked out of those, you are like a beetle on its back, and that's an absolutely normal feeling.

Yeah.

But one of the things, you fact that women think they're wearing a sweater with a scarlet F on it. Yeah is mostly in their head. Mm-hmm and They have created that shit. They have put the shame upon themselves. That's right. Yeah, and the sooner you're able to shake the shame and take off the you know, metaphorical sweater and Stop thinking that everyone in the room is talking about you when you walk in or they're talking about you behind your

back.

They're not. You know, they're not. And the sooner you can shake that, you can move on and reach out to people about other opportunities.

Yeah. Well, the other thing is I remember when it happened to me at 22 because there'd been so much publicity about me coming to Baltimore and doing the evening news, and I had a co-anchor who didn't want me there, and all of that stuff that I walked into that I didn't know, I felt shame and embarrassed by it. I was embarrassed by it, and I also felt like a failure. I felt like I had failed at this thing that I had come to do, which eventually turned out to be okay because they put me on a talk show. And that was really where

I...

Touche. Touche. But something you said earlier, Laura, you said, we knew we were good at our jobs. Yes. Yes. You know, and we're left to feel like there's something you did that was inadequate. It's very different when you feel like you're being blamed for being inadequate and you fail than, you know, something happened in the company, I was great at my job, and we're no longer...

Do you see a difference?

Yes, there's absolutely a difference, but there's also a difference in numbers. So if you feel like, you know, especially the Doge layoffs and we're just reading about all the college educated people now who have lost jobs and

You know harder to control, but there's so many more of you unfortunately in this

And so what you do have while you have this terrible feeling you do have you actually do have a community

Yeah to wear it on yourself because sadly you don't have the exclusive on it. Right, right. I think so many of you will relate to this passage. If you're not confident in your position, you don't know where you stand day to day, or worse, if you're even valued, well, get out of there, sister.

Leave them before they leave you. that quiet quitting thing, nonsense, why would you want to passively prolong a situation that is chipping away at you every day? Christina, you say you fantasized about firing yourself, right? But you never had the courage to do it. How do you know when it's time to leave?

Yeah, well, read the room.

Vibes are off?

Yeah, are the vibes off? You know, I think if you dread going to work, that's a pretty telling sign. If you're having sleepless nights, if you're sitting there sort of wishing Friday came sooner, I think all of that is very...

You know, your body tells you before maybe your mind catches up. So, I think if you're in a situation like that, protect yourself. Also, there's so many things that people can do, even if they love their jobs. But there are things that I hadn't done in 10 years.

I hadn't updated my resume. I had not gone on LinkedIn. I hadn't download a single contact or backed up an email. So, when this happened to me, I felt like the triage that needed to be done just to sort of save the like simple things that you could be doing along the way

to sort of put yourself in a better place, you know, if I had done some of those things, maybe I would have felt a little more confident in the next step.

You all know Brooke Baldwin. She was a high profile CNN news anchor for more than a decade with her own show. It was her dream job since she was a high profile CNN news anchor for more than a decade with her own show. It was her dream job since she was a little girl. And then she was fired in 2021. This year, Brooke gave a TEDx talk titled, Getting Fired From My Dream Job Taught Me About Truth,

and wrote an essay for Vanity Fair titled, Leaving CNN Was How I Found My Voice. So hi, Brooke.

Good to see you. Hi, everyone.

I needed this book four years ago. I needed it four years ago.

You described getting fired as an unraveling, but in a good way. How so? Let's talk about that.

I mean, at the time, not so much. And I'm listening to all of y'all, and I'm like, there was no HR involved in mine. I was like, does anyone want an exit interview? No? No? I was like, does anyone want an exit interview? No, no, okay. I can't tell the truth as to why I'm actually leaving.

No, okay. That was so, so hard. And my bar was three weeks in the British Virgin Islands drinking a lot of dark and stormies. That said, after I wiped my tears and had wiser friends say to me,

Brooke, this is a gift, this is a gift. And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about you know ultimately I realized this was the beginning of my unraveling like Oprah you say this and it's so right on its like the universe comes. And first it's the whisper and we're really always we're like

I want to hear I want to hear and then comes the knock more like I want to know who's on the other side of the door. And then, as I put it, like the frying pan to the forehead. Yeah. And I got the frying pan. And I only now know that I needed it, that I had veered so totally off my path.

And I needed to come home to myself, which is exactly what I've been doing.

Wow.

But did you know why at the time you were being fired?

And was it a surprise? It was a total surprise. You know, like I think it was Laura who said, I had sort of one foot out the door. I knew I wasn't in full alignment. I knew that, you know, I was into covering stories using my humanity, my authenticity. And I think the currency more and more in cable news was around being pugilistic and interviewing people and having these cable news food fights.

And it just wasn't my jam. There are people way better at that than me. And so one day I got a call, you know, and that was my version of April Fool's Day. And to this day, I have no, I have no idea. I got fired without cause.

I have that on paper. And that was part of the hardest part. It's like, you know, I had this perseverating, like, I'm a good person, I'm a good person, I'm a good person. Like, how did this happen? Why did this happen? But it needed to happen, and I know that now.

Mm.

How did it affect your self-identity? You know, I think, particularly people who are in high-profile jobs that other people recognize as high-profile jobs, you lose yourself in that job. You lose yourself in the identity of what you do. So how did it affect how you saw yourself?

I've also heard this from other women who aren't in high profile jobs. You become, and I know you all talk to lots of people. So I want your thoughts on that and then your thoughts on that.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, my identity was inextricably linked with those three little letters. Like in all of my time at CNN, I would make phone calls and be, CNN's Brooke Baldwin, this is Brooke calling from CNN. And then all of a sudden, like record scratch,

I'm just making a phone call and I'm just Brooke? Who's just Brooke? And I had to have a real sort of come to Jesus with who that person is. But to all of y'all's point, I have, in coming home to myself,

I literally get down on my knees and pray all the time. It helped me free myself to now figure out, ah, who is just Brooke and what does Jess Brooke now want

to do?

Yeah. Did a lot of people talk about self-identity?

Yeah. I mean, you know, it's an easy thing to do. If you enjoy what you do and you're passionate about what you do, you do place some of your value in what you do. But that's the dangerous part if it, especially in any business. Again, there's status, there's comfort, there's all of these things.

And there's reward.

The Oprah Show was my life.

Yeah. It was my life.

I know, and similar to you, Brooke. It was my, that's all I did. Everything. I went to work, I did work,

and then I got up and went to work again. It's a very seductive thing, obviously, and it's a very rewarding thing, but you have to just peek around it a bit, you know, just to remind yourself that there is something else out there to keep something else going on in your life, your friends, your family, some other thing that just broadens you as a person. So when this happens, you're not totally laid out, you know what I mean? And that's what's really, really hard, though.

Yeah.

Christina? And I think we live in an interesting time where the types of jobs that people are able to create when they walk away from something as monumental as what you had built and what Brooks' role on CNN was, there's so many more opportunities out there than there were when we were coming up, right? And I think it's been really exciting to sort of see people who lose their jobs create new opportunities to start working for themselves. The landscape has changed so dramatically, even in the two and a half years since we

left our positions. And I think that's such a good reminder that you can create something new out of the ashes.

Yeah. I love what Brooke said too about coming home to herself. I think no matter who you are, no matter who you are, when it happens, you have to give yourself room to be still, have the drinks, go out and do the drinks.

Lay on the sofa.

Lay on the sofa, do the tears, all of that, but be still enough to come back home because it is a resetting for yourself, no matter who you are. I think it's a resetting for yourself. No matter who you are, I think it's a resetting.

It is. Honestly, I mean, my husband came up with this, it's because of the Johnny Appleseed rule. We're basically like, you don't know this, but in any career you're in, if you're a nice person, you've worked hard,

you're actually throwing seeds around.

Yeah.

All the time, unwittingly. And when you need it, you will look around and there's a little orchard for you because you've created this world for yourself. And we had people will show up for you. Don't be shy. Ask them. If you've done good work and you have good relationships, people will show up for you and don't isolate yourself

and open yourself up to that because you're reminded of who you are and not what your job was.

Absolutely. anyone listening about how you recovered, what didn't work, what did? You know, I think one of the things that was actually the hardest part was I really had to get to know my younger self. Like we had to get in. We had to be in deep conversation, you know, because when I was graduating college and all my girlfriends were living in a big city and living these, you know, sex in the city, exciting lives. I was moving to small town America, you know, I'm rolling the teleprompter under the desk with my foot.

I'm covering water skiing squirrels. I'm working all the graveyard shifts, you know. I dated the wrong guys. I put off having kids, like my eggs were still frozen. And so I had to really, I had to tell her, you like talk to your younger self.

She's not disappointed in you, you know? You're gonna make her proud. Just watch. Just watch and wait and have faith. And speaking of the drinking, I'll end with this. I quit, you know? For the first time in my life, I realized, gosh, with all this change happening for me,

I felt myself starting to reach a numb in a way that I felt was unhealthy, and I feel fortunate that I could just quit cold turkey like that. But I like clarity.

It's a gift.

That's where I am.

Clarity is your gift. Yeah.

Agree.

And it takes time to get there.

It does. It does. Years.

It does. Well, thanks, Brooks. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you. Thriving, flourishing. Good to see you. Idina Presley is a single mom of two daughters, and for 34 years, she was vice president at a well-known financial group.

And last year, she was laid off due to large-scale downsizing. And Idina, I hear you relate to the shame piece, but now you're feeling better about it, excited, right?

I'm feeling so excited about it. And, you know, I'm feeling so excited about it. And you know, I'm sitting back here.

So now you belong to all the cool girls.

I'm a cool girl.

One of the cool girls. High five. High five.

That's right, high five. I'm such a cool girl. As I'm sitting here and I'm listening to Christina and Laura and even Brooke, I'm sitting here and I'm just like, oh my God, yes, that was me. Every single thing that they spoke about happened to me. And I think what I really wanted to let people know is, yeah, it's okay to be a cool girl and get fired.

It's okay for you to say, you know what? I don't wanna work for anybody else anymore. I wanna work for myself, you know? And I looked at it as, you know what? You guys actually did me a favor. You put a battery in my back and you gave me the confidence to say, I can do this and I can do this on my own. So I am loving it. I have to be honest, when I first got the call, I didn't say that I was let go. And I think the reason why I didn't, it wasn't so much shame, it was so much, um, like, I'm not gonna let your bad decisions

or your, you know, the, um, the decisions you made with regards to business and that you had to downsize diminish the work that I did. You know, I was successful at what I did, I was good at what I did, and yeah, I was a cool girl where I was. So I was not going to let that define me. So that's where I'm at right now.

OPRAH WINFREY, The CW Hostess Podcast

But did you grieve in the beginning? Was there some grief for you about the job that was? Or did you immediately go into, I'm going to do something on my own?

Well, first of all, I think like Laura had mentioned, I kind of knew it was coming because 15 minutes before the virtual meeting, I saw that it was my boss and the HR professional.

So the writer was like,

Oh my God.

It's so cliche. I mean, that's the most like,

Oh my God.

We're all in the same boat.

Yeah.

And the script.

Yeah. Yes. So I knew it was coming. And when they, you know, when you finally hear the words, I sat there for a second and I literally closed my laptop and I said, wow, that wasn't so bad. I feel like a ton of bricks is lifted up off of my chest

because like Christina, in my role, I was starting to become discouraged. I was starting to become, I couldn't even motivate my team. It was a struggle for me because I didn't like the direction that the company was going in.

I didn't like the decisions that they were making. You know, I saw the cutbacks that was coming. And to be honest with you, I was actually shocked. So my question is, and this could be for either one of you ladies. What advice would you give women, especially those like me, who's further along in their career, because I'm 54, and we have to reinvent ourselves and start over.

You know, like what advice would you give with regards to that?

Well, I was inspired to hear that you're working for yourself. And I think that that is such a good reminder that everything you built didn't evaporate when your job did. And that you're able to take it with you and put it to work for yourself.

And I think that so many people get shocked into, you know, discouragement and can't see, you know, an opportunity. And I think it's really impressive that you were able to sort of see the forest from the trees and, you know, came and put something together for yourself.

Yes, you've built a platform of your own skills and history, and it doesn't disappear if you lose your job. You stand on that, and you should feel tall and not make yourself small. The second thing I would say is one of our experts mentioned this. When this happens to you, you are in shock, but he said, look at, take a beat, and we all have a beat, you know, to what made you more happy and less happy over the course of your career. So what can you do

to increase the happiness and decrease the unhappiness? And we call it math for your dreams. Like, take that moment and there's just, in any job we've had, we're like, okay, this is fine, this is fine, I've got it, sort of, I've got it. And there's a little, hopefully a bit of curiosity or a bit of attention to change or a bit of a passion that's been lying in you that you haven't explored because you've been in this job.

You know, the job that you're in, sometimes it's like a sandpit, hi Jimmy, hi Johnny, hi Jimmy, hi Johnny. And you know the sandpit, you know the sandpit. And you go there, maybe the sandpit's a little dirtier, but you still know it. And then something happens when you're fired, you're like, there was a beach the entire time I've been sitting in the sandpit, there's a whole beach out there,

I didn't notice. That's the beach experience and that ability to look at that beach and follow that passion. You've done that by working for yourself. So, bravo.

And experience doesn't go away. Experience becomes, that's the thing that you bring with you.

Yeah, I absolutely believe that. One of the things I said in all the cool girls get fired, is that when I was telling my story about, you know, being taken off the 6 o'clock news, is that the bounce back is even greater. However far down you are taken, the bounce back comes back even greater. Because it gives you a moment to reassess, as Brooke was saying, to come home to yourself,

which is exactly how I felt the very first day I did my first talk show interview. And I felt like, oh, this is why that happened. This is what I was supposed to do. And now that's exactly where you are, Dina. Congratulations, actually.

Thank you so much.

Congratulations on the setback was a setup, girl. Setback was a setup. Thank you. You all write that getting fired can actually be a wake-up call, that it's actually a wake-up call. And you say that if one's identity is tied to that job, then it's time to reset.

Exactly.

So what do you want to say to women about resetting boundaries at work?

Yeah, I mean, listen, it's so tempting to answer the emails at 8, 9 o'clock at night or on the weekend. Yes, it is. And it's very tempting to kind of only, you know, hang out with friends that you met in the office. Mm-hmm. You know, but I think with time and age and perspective, you know, I have learned, you know, going into my new job, you have to set boundaries, you have to create

passions and interests outside of the day job, and those are the things that remain when the job doesn't. You have work friends, and then you have real friends, and you have to have those, you have to be able to make a distinction. And I think too many people get wrapped up in...

You lose the line, lose the boundaries. You've given it all.

Keep your eye on the horizon, I think. You know, and what you're in right now is what you're in right now. But if you are... I mean, look at the change that we're all just facing as a country every single day. Yeah. You know, it's like Christina said, read the room in your workplace, read the room in the world. You know, and be aware of what's happening in your business, what's happening around you, and just, there's strength in that. There's strength in that for when something does happen

that you feel that you have some power. And that's really key, I think. So there's your job and here's the world and just keep your eye on the bigger picture. Well, you end the book with a collection of epiphanies.

In one you write, what you've experienced hopefully is a capital R revelation. You have options you never knew you had, in worlds you'd never explored, working with people you really respect, and hopefully you're not only inspired,

you are prepared. What do you most want all the cool girls who are watching us right now, listening to us, to know about getting fired?

It's not the end.

Yeah.

It is the beginning. It can sound trite, but we promise you, even if you're shocked into this moment, sit with it, rest, don't rest, but we promise you, even if you're shocked into this moment, sit with it, rest, don't rest, you know, rest, but don't retreat, and open your eyes up to what's out there. And we promise you the reward is out there and will be more on your own terms.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, echoing that, I mean, we wouldn't be here if we hadn't been fired. You know, we kind of joke that we're now the poster girls for getting fired. But we really, you know, we're proud of that. And I think starting the conversation, reach out to people, let them know what you're going through, let them lift you up. You have to let people know you want to be lifted and carried.

And I think that that is so important and was such a reminder. How many people reached out to us in the moments that it happened? It was so refreshing and so rewarding to have that network. And just a reminder to everyone who's going through it, just keep your head up, stay positive

and do some math for your dreams.

I go back to the fact that when your boss said, I'm gonna let you create your own narrative, you're like, no, I want to tell people the truth that I've been fired. And I think one of the things you all have done with this book, All the Cool Girls Getting Fired, I mean, listen, I hope that it's a best, best, best,

best, bestseller. And that it gets normalized, that we can say the words out loud. There's no shame, no blame, no, you know, grief and sorrow attached to that. That it's like, it's a fact of life. And now I'm going to reset and use that set back to set myself up for something even more attuned

to what I really want to do. I mean, I think it's a wake-up call, and it's also a growth spurt.

It's such a growth spurt. I mean, I've had, you know, literally women coming up to me in the street saying, when's the book I need? Oh, I got fired. Or here's my friend.

She got fired and they're having drinks in a restaurant for you. There's no shame. You see the faces change. You know, women light up and it's like, let's flip this. Let's get a bit of bravado. Let's get a bit of ownership and let's move on.

Let's change the culture.

Oh, I love that you've done this. Thank you. Mar Brown and Christina O'Neill, their inspiring new book, All the Cool Girls Get Fired is available wherever books are sold. And thank you, Brooke Baldwin and Adina for sharing your stories. Listeners, thank you for your valuable time. Let's meet up again next week.

Go well, everybody. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week.

Thanks, everybody.