-One of my favorite pieces of advice
that I've gotten from mentors, peer mentors, was
leave the red tape behind.
Don't ever let fear stop you from doing what you want to do.
I had always wanted to be an editor-in-chief
of a publication
and I think everything that I've done throughout my career
has set me up, skill-wise, passion-wise, for this role.
I'm Simone Oliver,
global editor-in-chief of Refinery29.
♪♪
Welcome to the offices of Refinery29 here
in Brooklyn, New York.
I'm going to take you through a little bit
of my day-to-day, talk about my career journey,
and, hopefully, give you some practical advice.
Come on, let's go.
When I had been at The New York Times,
I said, "My five-year-goal is to run a dotcom, right?
Like a fashion-, beauty-, lifestyle-oriented dotcom.
And Refinery was a brand
that I'd loved from the very beginning.
I've always felt like it spoke to me.
So when I got the call, obviously,
I'm going to take the call.
My anxiety, though, really, really lied in the fact that
the media industry can be hard.
Like it's straight-up hard, but it's also wildly exciting.
♪♪
I've gotten a lot of advice in my career
and I think, when I'm looking at a potential employee,
one of the biggest things that I look for is
do you ask questions,
even if they might be uncomfortable questions,
but are you a thoughtful person, right,
and are you thinking things through,
are you a critical thinker?
And, a lot of times, the type of questions
that you ask, it reveals a lot.
What I've noticed is that a lot of young employees, in general,
they tend to have a lot of anxiety
around cold calling people,
reaching out, emailing, hitting people up on LinkedIn,
and I usually just tell them like just do it.
But when you do it, don't just do it and say,
"Hey, I really admire you.
Can we talk one day?"
If you are lucky enough to get time with that person,
come to that call with three things, right?
Three questions you want to ask them
or three things that you're maybe
having trouble working through
and that'll be a very productive call.
Cultivating relationships is wildly important.
It's really important that you
keep following up, right? You keep in touch.
And we always say, "Keep in touch," right?
But what does that really mean?
That means reach out to them
when maybe you saw somewhere that they got a new job
or they did an interesting project
and maybe they shared it, right?
It means, when you've done something interesting
in your job and maybe you're proud of it
and just saying, "Hey, you know, Happy Valentine's Day.
I just wanted to tell you I worked
on this really cool photo shoot and I wanted to share my work,
you know. Hope all as well."
For some people, it may feel kind of braggy
or it might feel a little uncomfortable
or even purposeless, but that keeping in touch
lets that person know that, "A," you're in touch
and you're not just coming to them when you need something.
It also keeps them abreast of what you're working on.
One of the moments that probably had the biggest impact
on my career was when I pushed
for creating the first New York Times Instagram.
At the time, the paper was very
against creating an Instagram account
because they didn't really feel like there was value
in a platform that didn't allow users
to link back to The New York Times, right?
And their main goal was to get subscribers, right?
Makes sense. So I'd asked permission
and was told no several times, but I felt like,
if we're going to be talking to the next generation,
it's really important that we be where that generation is
and so I started it. [ Laughs ]
I got a very nasty note from our social editor at the time,
which I ended up saving forever.
I still have that email.
It was a little bit scary, right?
Because I didn't want to go on record as losing my job
for starting an Instagram account, right?
But then, on the other hand, that's been something
that is very much a part of my story
and very much a part of the paper's,
you know, digital journey, as a whole.
You can't let fear stop you from what you want to do.
That's the one thing my dad told me when I was younger,
but, honestly, getting a chance at this opportunity
to work at Refinery
and help evolve a brand that you've loved for so long
and lead a team of amazing people,
you can't sleep on that, so, I took the job.
So now that you know a little bit about my journey,
let's go to my office.
♪♪
So what I love about Refinery29 is
it is truly a safe space where people can come
and just be themselves.
We're the brand that doesn't care
if they get invited to the party
because we're having our own party.
As the global editor-in-chief of Refinery29,
it's my job to lead the vision
on how R29 shows up in the world.
So, every day, my responsibilities change.
Every day is different.
When I wake up, all of London is already messaging me,
so I'm communicating with them, responding to emails,
and I'm looking at what's on fire,
what's simmering, what's everywhere in between.
On an average day, I get about anywhere
from 1,000 to 4,500 emails a day,
so I have to go through, scan, scan, scan,
and make sure that I'm attacking what's most important.
You have to be a ruthless prioritizer.
You have to make a list.
To be honest, on most days, I don't get everything done.
I take everything that was on my list
of what was to get done today and I move that to tomorrow
and then I know that, tomorrow, I'm going to try to tackle it.
I'm going to try to do the best that I can,
but being okay with the fact
that not everything is going to get done.
I think my favorite part of the job is
doing a lot of steering, right?
Like I set the vision for the brand,
but I also need to make sure
that all of what we do across our entire team globally
is in line with that vision
and that requires a lot of communication
And probably one of the most important parts of my job is
managing people.
It takes a lot of people to put together
the content that we put together
and they put their hearts into it.
But they're also people and they have lives.
They have families, they have pets,
they have plants, you know,
and they have real things going on in their lives.
And they're also amazing and have ideas
that they often need mentors, you know.
They're trying to navigate their lives and careers.
And I'm no oracle, but I do take mentoring really seriously.
One of my favorite pieces of advice
that I've gotten from mentors, peer mentors, was
leave the red tape behind.
When I first started the New York Times Fashion
Instagram account, that was a moment where
I had a choice and I could've not done it,
but, I asked for forgiveness after the fact.
And so it's not something
that applies to every situation, of course,
but leave the red tape behind is something that sticks with me
in everything that I do.
Take risks, calculated risks.
And, with that, thanks.
♪♪
Remember, stay in touch.
♪♪