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Finding your niche with Amy Odell
621 Plays2 years ago
We spoke with fashion and culture journalist Amy Odell about breaking into journalism, her biography of Anna Wintour, and the opportunities and challenges of the changing landscape of digital media.
Subscribe to Amy’s Substack, Back Row, at https://amyodell.substack.com/
Subscribe to the Content People newsletter at https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Connect with Meredith at https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Content People' Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Content People, a podcast where we talk to creative professionals and leaders to get a behind the scenes look at their career experiences and hopefully turn that into actionable advice for listeners. Tune in to hear from experts in various media and get inspired to find contentment in your own career. I'm your host Meredith Farley. As some of you know, I used to be the COO at Brafton where I oversaw creative project management and consulting teams. I'm no longer with the company, but Brafton is still producing this podcast. So thanks Brafton.
00:00:38
Speaker
We recorded this episode a while ago, so you might hear me make mention to my former role just at my idol. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing now, you can check me out on LinkedIn and subscribe to my newsletter, which is also called Content People. We'll link to that in the show notes. Give it a shot. It's a once a week send where I share thoughts and actionable advice based on my nearly 15 years of creative leadership.
00:00:59
Speaker
You can also listen, rate, and subscribe to content people wherever you get your podcasts.
Guest Introduction: Amy O'Dell's Career
00:01:04
Speaker
Along with me in the recording booth today is Ian Serbin, creative director of video at Brapton and producer of this show. Hey, Ian. Hey, Meredith.
00:01:13
Speaker
On today's episode, we get into the weeds with fashion and culture journalist, Amy O'Dell. Amy has had a formidable career spanning from traditional magazines to her current work on Substack with a lot of impressive steps in between. Amy worked at New York Magazine where she launched the fashion block, The Cut. Ever heard of it? Amy also built Buzzfeed's fashion vertical and was the digital editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. She is an absolute powerhouse with a ton of experience and wisdom.
00:01:43
Speaker
Also, I feel like I want to acknowledge this was inadvertent, but we have a bit of a convergence happening. We chatted with Atoosa Rubinstein, formerly of Cosmo Girl, Kimberly Brown, who writes for The Cut. We now have Amy, who is a bit of a tide of book publications. I'm really loving getting to have these conversations with some truly influential leaders who shape pretty significant corners of cultural content.
00:02:05
Speaker
Absolutely. This has been really exciting.
Changes in Fashion Journalism
00:02:09
Speaker
Last year, Amy published Anna, the biography of Anna Wintour. She also has a really fantastic sub-stack back row, and that publishes an insider's look into the fashion industry.
00:02:21
Speaker
I love that grow. I've been following Amy's career for a few years. I was so happy to have her on the show. I was really curious for her to talk through kind of what's changed in fashion journalism over the years, especially as she's transitioned from legacy media companies like New York Magazine, which is very traditional in their structure, to being at the forefront of digital media, like the work she did at Buzzfeed, and now in her sub-stack.
00:02:49
Speaker
It's really interesting hearing her describe all of the different opportunities she had by working at these really large media companies with lots of resources, but also the limitations that they have when they're chasing scale and creating content designed to reach a broad audience.
00:03:05
Speaker
There are a lot of really compelling stories that they end up missing, and she's able to cover that by being independent and running her own newsletter. She has this more direct relationship with her own audience, and she has that control over the stories and the content that she shares. Yeah, absolutely agree. It was a really great conversation. Here's our chat.
Advice for New Journalists
00:03:34
Speaker
So Amy, it was almost hard to put together the intro for you because you have done an accomplish so much. I'm such a fan of yours. I'm very grateful that you took the time to chat with us. So thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for saying that. No. So to give folks who might not know you some context before we jump in. So you started as a freelancer at New York Magazine.
00:03:57
Speaker
And then you launched its fashion blog, The Cut, which is huge. And then over your career, you've also launched the fashion vertical at BuzzFeed, and you served as the digital editor at Cosmopolitan from 2013 to 2018.
00:04:12
Speaker
And while you're at Cosmo, you won a National Magazine Award for a 2017 package about how to run for office. And you've also written two really popular books, Tales from the Backrow and Outsiders View from Inside the Fashion Industry. And the recently published Anna, a biography of Anna Wintour, which is now available. And you also run the very popular sub-stack.
00:04:33
Speaker
So you are in the spirit of content people. You are among the most content person I can think of. Just done and accomplished so much. One place I really like to jump in is that.
00:04:48
Speaker
Like, I think your career, when I was younger, when I was like 18 and trying to figure out what do I want to do? If someone had outlined a career like yours, I would have thought, oh, that is it. But it just seems like such a, it might have seemed like a bit of a fairy tale to me. And I'm really curious about if you're giving advice to somebody new just starting out, maybe in college, maybe just graduated.
TikTok's Impact on Journalism
00:05:10
Speaker
who wanted to take a similar path. And I know that the creative and editorial space is different now than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago even. What advice might you give them? What do you think some steps they could take to be ready for and or find opportunities to also build a career in kind of fashion journalism and editorial style content?
00:05:36
Speaker
You know, the advice that I've given over the years has changed. And I find I'm giving a different answer now, which is get on TikTok and establish yourself as a voice. That would probably be my biggest piece of advice right now if someone is wanting to get into fashion journalism or maybe any kind of journalism.
00:06:06
Speaker
It used to be that you would go and you would get a job as an editorial assistant. You might want to be Anna Winters' assistant at Vogue. But I don't see those jobs really getting people nearly as far as they used to because you used to be able to get a job like that and you would work your way up the ladder. Well, now, editors-in-chief are, I don't know, 30 years old.
00:06:32
Speaker
So there's just not, you know, you just can't grow as much as you used to be able to. The ceiling is lower. And so I think that it's really important for people to do everything they can to establish their own audience, you know, whether they intend to be working in the capacity of influencers or not.
00:06:58
Speaker
I think that's so interesting that you say that and it makes sense to me. I wanted to chat about the importance of New York, which maybe we can get to in a second because I feel like it's probably related. But in some ways, as you say that, I wonder if it could feel a bit like a relief to some people who want to get into that because I know, say 15 years ago when I was trying to think of a path for myself,
00:07:26
Speaker
Things like fashion, New York, it felt like a wall of, to your point, so few jobs that it was probably so hard to get to even know the right people to talk to, to understand what you had to do to get the jobs. And as I think of TikTok, I'm curious for your thoughts or social media or the ability to build your platform online is somewhat democratizing in that it gives more access to more people. But I could be wrong. What do you think about that?
00:07:57
Speaker
The question is, do you need to be in New York or? No, I want to get to that in a second. But I think I'm curious to know, do you feel like that TikTok, for example, and the ability to build one's own voice to have a presence and a career in the industry gives, it makes the industry more accessible in that you don't have to find, you don't have to
00:08:24
Speaker
It's just a different path where maybe if you don't have a network or you're not in the right spot, there's a little more access or perhaps not. I think it really depends on the person. Certain kinds of people are going to do well on TikTok, certain kinds of people are going to do well in a room meeting new people. I think there's value to both.
00:08:51
Speaker
Got it. Interesting. So maybe it's important too for people to know their strengths and think that they're like, all right, well, I'm a networker. I connect with people. I light up around people that I need to put myself in positions to meet folks who can help my career versus someone who's like, TikTok just comes to me as naturally as breathing. Like, okay, go down the route that might serve you best, perhaps.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I, gosh, I mean, with the pandemic, like so many people have been home and the fashion world, I feel, has kind of roared back to life. There is a lot of in-person events. It's always been a very social industry. There's always parties and events that you can go to. And I used to go to them for my job. My job used to be to attend parties and red carpet events for New York Magazine and interview.
00:09:46
Speaker
celebrities and prominent people at those events. And I actually met a lot of, like one of my best friends today, I met doing that. I don't know, this would have been 16 years ago. So like there's those kinds of connections too that are valuable in addition to meeting people, meeting people in the industry.
00:10:08
Speaker
But TikTok, fashion is an insular industry. It's one that has historically been really averse to technology. This is something I write about in Anna the Biography. Now, we take for granted that runway shows are published online. We know that if we go to Vogue Runway or open our Vogue Runway app, we're going to see all the shows from the fashion season.
00:10:31
Speaker
And that wasn't always the case. That has only been the case since around, I think, 1999. And Anna Winter was one of the people who went to fashion houses and said, you need to allow us to publish your runway shows online.
00:10:51
Speaker
But it's kind of remarkable to think just how averse the industry was to that change. And I think that the industry is still, it's embraced technology a remarkable amount since then, but it's still rather averse to it. And I think a lot of industries are like this. I think a lot of industries don't embrace change or they embrace it and then they feel like, oh, I don't know about this. And I think TikTok is very scary for fashion.
00:11:20
Speaker
People on TikTok are very honest. If you think of the big TikTok fashion stories of the past year or even since the dawn of TikTok, one would certainly be the Chanel advent calendar that got dragged for being a piece of crap. But costing, I forgot the exact price, it was only like $800.
00:11:46
Speaker
So that's what fashion has to contend with on TikTok. There's also new voices on TikTok. The same fashion influencers that we know from Instagram are not necessarily the people who are popular on TikTok. So it's a very new world. It's a new frontier. I can understand why brands would be afraid. But as we've seen in the past, the brands that get ahead of it, that embrace this change, the media outlets that embrace these platforms first, the earlier you can adapt, the better off you are.
00:12:16
Speaker
No, I think that makes a lot of sense and it's really interesting to consider. And from the outside, when I look at your career, I feel like you've often been at the forefront of evolving how media is responding to and covering the fashion industry and adjacent industries a little bit.
Content Strategy: Shareability to SEO
00:12:41
Speaker
at Cosmopolitan, for example, the growth that you achieve for their readership. And actually, there's a quote of yours that I pulled up, which the couple sentences long, but I want to read it. And then I want to pick your brain a little bit about what you're saying here.
00:12:55
Speaker
So you said once, you can think of news as what's in the New York Times today or what's in the Wall Street Journal. What are today's stories? That's a one dimensional way to think about it. Or you can start with that and then ask, what are people saying about this over here? That's what I learned at BuzzFeed, how to think about news in the context of the Internet as opposed to just news. I try to get everyone to think about shareable content.
00:13:19
Speaker
I thought that was so wise, so interesting, so representative truly of the way in the last 10 to 12 years, how news outlets or cover or think about content has changed. I'm really curious to unpack that a bit with you. In your time leading up editorial teams, how did you get people to think about shareable content? What do you think makes something very clickable?
00:13:48
Speaker
What's your formula for getting your teens to think in that very shareable direction as opposed to just, this is the news item of the day that we must publish?
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny to even think about shareable content today. I assume if you're asking me about it, marketers are still concerned about it. But I also feel like when I left Cosmo in 2018, early 2018, that was kind of almost even over. So, and it was shifting really to SEO, which I find to be dreadfully boring.
00:14:23
Speaker
But shareable content was historically about tapping into emotions. And, you know, it wasn't just saying, I don't know, unfortunately, the Kardashians are the first thing that pop into my head because when I think of these kinds of websites, that's what they have to do all day, so they get their clicks. But, you know,
00:14:47
Speaker
Let's say the Kylie Jenner private jet story. You could say, you know, Kylie Jenner took a private jet flight that was, I forget how long it was, 17 minutes or something. Or you could say Kylie Jenner took a 17 minute private jet flight and people are pissed. What are you going to click on?
00:15:12
Speaker
It was really like a headline, like when I was taking pictures from writers, as an editor, if they couldn't come up with a headline for the piece, people will sit in a meeting and they'll pitch you something.
00:15:30
Speaker
They might, you know, talk for a long time about it and their idea. And as an editor, you have to decide, is this a story? Is this a topic? Is this something that we're going to cover? A topic is not an article. I mean, maybe an SEO land it is because people publish explainers and update them and they get traffic that way.
00:15:50
Speaker
But I was not interested in doing a lot of explainers. I wanted really good, juicy articles. I would ask people, what's the headline for this story? If they couldn't think of the headline, that often told me that they probably didn't really know what the story was and they were going to write a piece that was rambling and maybe didn't quite work as a piece.
00:16:17
Speaker
And, you know, when I write my newsletter, I often do write the headline last, but newsletter, and now we're moving to, you know, that your era of content is changing. I think shareable content is kind of over. I think for websites, it's about SEO. And then I think for, you know, there's a lot of newsletters now, and I think marketers really need
Rise of Niche Newsletters
00:16:38
Speaker
to pay attention to this because
00:16:40
Speaker
newsletter writers like me have so, so much captive attention and such large audiences of people who are very interested in a specific niche and are really there with you in a way that they're not with the mass website.
00:16:55
Speaker
And writing a newsletter headline is completely different from writing a headline that you want to perform, let's say, on Facebook. And I don't even know if articles even perform on Facebook anymore. I know that Facebook is undergoing a lot of changes. So I think we're really in the midst of a total shift in the content landscape, you know, from these mass, mass
00:17:22
Speaker
site kind of more to, you know, I mean, I don't know what else to call them other than influencers, but kind of like journalist influencers to niche, really niche content verticals like newsletters.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's interesting. Um, I'd love to chat about your newsletter a little bit back row and then also about Anna maybe starting with back row, what was the impetus for you to start it and what, what is your process? Like I'm fat. I love it. I click it every time I'm fascinated by it. And I'd really love to know what it's like on the creative side for you. Yeah.
Launching 'Back Row' on Substack
00:18:04
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much for reading it. Um, I,
00:18:09
Speaker
I started it because I guess when I became aware of sub-stack, I was in the middle of writing Anna the Biography. I did not have time to do it, but I was interested in it because I thought it presented a really good opportunity for someone like me who, you know,
00:18:30
Speaker
is not going to make, to be perfectly honest with you, is not going to find a fulfilling career in freelancing in this decade, not only because budgets at legacy publications for freelance articles tend to be so low, but also because there's, frankly,
00:18:46
Speaker
It can be a very frustrating process because you're dealing with editors who are overworked and overtaxed and they're not going to give you the attention that they once did. So it's just really challenging to be a freelancer in this day and age for those reasons.
00:19:06
Speaker
I thought that Substack presented an opportunity not only to get around that problem, that if you're a veteran journalist and you want to make a real salary and you want to do good work that you're proud of and not just write SEO explainers, you could do that on Substack and you could build your own audience.
00:19:24
Speaker
And I also thought for fashion, there was a huge opportunity to do this. I feel like I could have done a newsletter about pop culture or other topics, but with fashion, I felt like there was really a lack of
00:19:41
Speaker
a lack of good articles to read. I think there's a huge audience of people out there who are feeling underserved, as I did, by the media that was out there. Because, as I said, legacy media
00:19:58
Speaker
They have certain goals that they have to hit and marketers listening to this will be aware, they're chasing scale and selling advertising online is all about scale. Well, how do you achieve scale? You publish clickbait about the Kardashians and you do boring SEO stuff and all of that. And then you mix in, you have some good stuff too that you feel really proud of, but it's all mixed in with all this other stuff that you just kind of have to do.
00:20:26
Speaker
And I think that people are really tired of it. I think people know that this is how websites work and just feel fatigued by it and they don't find that much stuff on legacy sites or by legacy publishers that they really take pleasure in reading.
00:20:42
Speaker
And that was the niche that I felt like I could fill with back row. And seeing it grow as much as it has indicates to me that I was far from the only person who felt that way. Because I do think that it's an extraordinary act on the part of news consumers to give somebody your email address so that they can send you, in my case,
Authenticity in Modern Media
00:21:04
Speaker
it's about two emails a week. You know, everybody's drowning in email.
00:21:09
Speaker
So I think it's remarkable that people are willing to do this or eager to do this so that they can get articles that they really want to read. Yeah. And I think.
00:21:22
Speaker
I agree, and it's funny, sometimes when I look at my emails, I've got one of your newsletters in there, and then probably the other 20 emails in my personal email are mostly skincare companies selling me things, and there is something very refreshing and empowering about knowing that you have
00:21:42
Speaker
subscribed literally and figuratively to something that is not legacy media out to sell you, it's just really thoughtful, interesting, and independent content. And I suppose as you're talking about it, I don't think I'd made that connection in my head. Maybe you don't agree, I'm curious, but I feel like there's something TikTok and sub stacks have this kind of
00:22:05
Speaker
independent, unbiased, or they have the biases of the writer or the influencer or creator as opposed to the kind of mandated biases or messages of a bigger brand. And I definitely see people responding to more authentic content in that way.
00:22:25
Speaker
What I'm interested in and lightly terrified by is the idea that certainly brands are going to try and figure out how do we harvest this independent authenticity to get the people we need, get the messages out.
00:22:44
Speaker
You'll probably start seeing more advertising or more sponsorships of newsletters like mine. I received inquiries. I never expected this to be the case. I received inquiries about branded sponsorships of my newsletter. And I don't really know how these marketers are thinking about it, to be honest with you.
00:23:04
Speaker
But I think that they're probably thinking about it. This is just my hunch, I'm speculating, but I suspect that they're thinking about it the way they do sponsorships of anything else where maybe they're looking for the massive, massive, massive reach that legacy publishers will promise their advertisers, even though these numbers are inflated and massaged. You can do anything with a dataset. You can make numbers say anything that you want to say.
00:23:35
Speaker
And legacy publishers use that to sell these ad deals.
00:23:43
Speaker
I think that what should happen is brands pay really for an engaged audience. I don't think that a lot of these numbers that marketers get, I don't think these are really engaged audiences. I think it's quite often, because I saw this happen in places I worked, it's quite often taking a dataset and making it say what you want it to say.
00:24:05
Speaker
But I think that with TikTok, with newsletters, you have a truly, truly engaged audience that is unlike the audience of many, many other places where people could be putting their ad dollars.
00:24:22
Speaker
I think it's going to take some time for brands to get more comfortable with that, but I think that they will and they will start to see the value in that. I think that those marketing dollars are going to start to shift really to more individual people. The thing is, with a sub-stack, someone like me does not need anywhere near the scale that any Conde Nast publication needs to be successful. I don't need anywhere near the
00:24:48
Speaker
the size of the ad revenue that Kanye West gets to be successful. And I'm offering something different. I'm not saying that you can even compare the two. But I think it's going to be a really good bet for certain brands and certain marketers in the long run.
00:25:10
Speaker
I'm curious on the creator side of it, the audience is so engaged because I think the authenticity and integrity of the work is really palpable. I think people are also open to the idea that these creators that they want to support are doing really good work and outside of a small monthly subscription per person.
00:25:31
Speaker
They need to monetize their talent in some way. I think there's an expectation that I see generally happening, that it's going to be done in a thoughtful way, that the person who is engaging with brands is going to be researching the brands transparent about the brand partnership, et cetera. In some ways, it could be a most day.
00:25:53
Speaker
a prestige for the brand to get to be aligned with these folks that their audience knows as being so careful about who they connect with.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I think- See it going or what are your thoughts on- Yeah, and I think, and I mean if you agree with this, but I think that there is a fatigue with kind of, and I don't want it to sound like I'm slamming this because I enjoy it as well, but I do think there's maybe a bit of a fatigue with influencer culture, like as we knew it in the 2010s and as it came up on Instagram,
00:26:29
Speaker
where we had a lot of people just posting really gorgeous and often very
00:26:38
Speaker
very high quality photo editorials. It was just that, you know, instead of using a model and a magazine, it was the same person over and over again on Instagram. But, you know, this was something that, and I say this a lot in my newsletter, like the fashion industry could get behind this, like just, you know, often a very good looking person styling beautiful photos and sharing them and tagging their brands and just saying, you know,
00:27:05
Speaker
I love this dress, I love this bag, I love these shoes. Fashion really liked that. I think that was comfortable for fashion, but it also became something where the influencers were getting just so much free stuff and so many free press trips. Audiences are savvy to that, especially now. I think there may be a little bit of
00:27:28
Speaker
fatigue with that. And I think that's why we're kind of seeing, you know, like on TikTok, you can see that kind of content too, if you want. And I enjoy that content. I don't want it to seem like I don't. And I have respect for what these influencers create, but I also think that this is why.
00:27:44
Speaker
you know, Chanel Advent calendar, TikTok girl, her name is Elise Harmon, like, she can gain such a following because she did something different. I think this is a person who enjoys luxury brands.
00:28:00
Speaker
who clearly was a fan enough of Chanel to buy this item, and then had no reason not to just say what she thought about it. And people really responded to that honesty because it is something that is so hard to find, particularly in fashion media.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder, I think if brands are going to have to become, if they're going to be working with influencers or creators of some kind who are building up a truly engaged and authentic audience, if brands are going to have to be comfortable with the idea of
00:28:38
Speaker
maybe getting dragged every now and then, or, you know. I see brands getting, yeah, I have to say, I see brands getting dragged every day on TikTok and...
00:28:50
Speaker
I think that would probably kind of freak me out if I were working in the comms department of a certain brand. But I think that it's funny because the work of journalism is to hold power to account. And we just see that manifesting in so many different ways now. And I think when you see someone on TikTok dragging Chanel, or I saw someone
00:29:18
Speaker
dragging a luxury shoe brand the other day and the video had about a million views on it. I think when you see that, that's another way of the audience or a content creator holding a brand or a person in a position of power to account.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, I know we've, you've touched on a little bit and like speaking of the fashion industry, your book, Anna, The Biography, I would love to, I'd love to hear,
Writing Anna Wintour's Biography
00:29:52
Speaker
I'm so curious about it. I've got it. I haven't started it yet. I, or I pre-ordered it on my Kindle rather.
00:30:02
Speaker
One of you could tell folks who might not be familiar a little bit about it, and then I know that it was just so, so thoroughly researched. I really would love to hear what the research process was like.
00:30:17
Speaker
I think of her as such a, she's such a prominent but somewhat mysterious though incredibly influential and powerful figure in the fashion industry. I was wondering also if you can talk a little bit about what it was like to try and tackle that in a book and if there's any intimidation factor there for you two. Yeah, so
00:30:43
Speaker
Let's see, so the book, you know, I really felt like the opportunity with the book was to talk about Anna as a woman in an extraordinary position of power who has had extraordinary longevity. If you think of business leaders, just in general, of the past 50 years, there are not many who have achieved what she has achieved over the length of time that she has been in power.
00:31:10
Speaker
People, I interviewed, believed that her cultural innovation was on par with that of Steve Jobs.
00:31:19
Speaker
Gosh, I don't know how long Steve Jobs ran Apple, but if you look at Jeff Bezos, he ran Amazon for 27 years and then stepped back. Anna Wintour has been editor-in-chief of Vogue for 34. And despite being in this position, this public position for so, so long, she still, as you said, remains an enigma even to people who
00:31:40
Speaker
who are close to her and who have known her for a very long time. And Anna the Biography is really about revealing her as a human being and also explaining what her secrets to success have been over the course of her career.
00:31:56
Speaker
I know that it seemed well from what I've read about it, you have done a ton of research around documentation and also you talk to so many people as part of this. How long did it take you to write this? And what was the general approach you took to researching the book?
00:32:17
Speaker
I interviewed more than 250 people to write the book. It was a process that took about three years, including the reporting, the writing, the editing, fact checking, all of those things that go into it.
00:32:37
Speaker
You know, in the beginning, it was really hard. Most people were afraid to talk about her and I knew this was going to be a challenge. So I had to figure out, you know, while I'm not getting interviews, I have a contract to write this book, what do I do?
00:32:52
Speaker
So I decided to go back to the very beginning of her life. She's in her 70s, so that's a lot of years to cover. So go back to the beginning of her life and work my way forward, thinking that the people who knew Anna when she was a teenager or younger would have more distance from her today and perhaps feel more comfortable talking about her. And that did prove to be a successful strategy, so I was able to start getting interviews.
00:33:19
Speaker
And I went about it without approaching her team because you don't want to give your subject an opportunity to tell people not to talk to you and meddle in your work.
00:33:32
Speaker
And they did, of course, find out that I was working on this. And by that time, I had been at it for, I think it was a year or two, year and a half, and I had interviewed somewhere between 100 and 150 people. And the response from her office was, you know, she didn't want to be interviewed. She's not someone who likes to talk about herself.
00:33:53
Speaker
She's also not someone who likes to have long meetings, so it would be out of character for her to sit down for a very long time and talk about her life and her career. So she unsurprisingly declined an interview, but her rep offered to set me up with her closest friends and colleagues for interviews. They sent over a list of names that included
00:34:13
Speaker
people like Tom Ford and Tory Burch and Serena Williams who the average person has heard of and then you know other people who are close to Anna who might be lesser known. There were other people who I had a very strong suspicion would not talk to me without clearing it with Anna so before I approached them I asked her rep you know would Anna sanction these and they ended up saying that everyone I wanted to talk to was perfectly fine. So
00:34:42
Speaker
there was some, um, some help behind the scenes from them. And when that happened, you know, access to other people came a lot easier, particularly people who had said no or hung up the phone on me before I was able to go back to them and said, you know, I know you were hesitant about talking to me, but it has been helping me with the book and I'm hoping that you would reconsider. And I did turn some nos into yeses towards the end. I'm really curious about
00:35:10
Speaker
In those conversations, I'd imagine that you're talking to a person who is like a friend or close with the subject, and is it
00:35:23
Speaker
As a journalist, how do you approach those conversations? One, I'm sure you're thankful for their time. You want to be respectful that what they're communicating to you is how they feel for the most part. But I'd imagine sometimes you're also maybe reading between the lines or curious to push a little more on a particular subject.
00:35:42
Speaker
How do you just, what is the approach to that type of meeting? Are you trying to get like specific details or are you trying to get a feeling and a sense of what direction to pursue next? Or both? I guess it's everything. I mean, when you, doing interviews for a biography was unlike anything I had ever done with where I have to say, because you're asking people, like the way I explain it to people is, if I asked you what happened to you this morning,
00:36:12
Speaker
Like, how many details could you give me about your morning? If I asked you about a conversation you had with a colleague yesterday, how many details could you give me about that? If I asked you about something last week, your memory would be even fuzzier. If I asked you about something that happened 60 years ago, it would be, of course, much, much, much harder for you.
00:36:37
Speaker
You're dealing with the human memory in a way that you don't really have to in other journalism. And that is tricky and it requires a lot of patience. It requires, you know,
00:36:52
Speaker
being unafraid to ask people the same questions and being unafraid to come back to people. Because probably if I had a conversation with you right now about yesterday morning, you would remember some things and then you would leave, you would hang up the phone and you would go about your day and then you would remember other things that you could have told me. So you have to make sure that you're calling people back and giving them the opportunity to tell you the things that they remembered because usually the person is not going to come back to you and say, oh, I remembered things. I had some people do that, but they were in the minority.
00:37:22
Speaker
Um, so there was that, but then you also, you have to prepare so much in order to get people to remember things. You have to read as much as you can about the person and their relationship with Anna. And when you're dealing with a prominent person, like, um, say Grace Coddington, you know, she's written a memoir. She has other books. She has a vast, vast portfolio of work that you can look at and, you know, pick out things to ask about that might be interesting.
00:37:51
Speaker
And that's not the case with everybody, but there were certain questions and you find there are certain questions that will always get you good answers and certain questions that will never get you good answers. So when you're interviewing people, you abandon the bad questions and you keep asking a good question. One question that ended up being particularly good was, what are Anna's pet peeves? A lot of people I asked that question to could think of some pet peeves.
00:38:22
Speaker
Like one person said, oh, she hates, and I heard this from a number of people, she hates chewing gum. So if you're around Anna, you don't want to be chewing gum. The drives are crazy. She used to hate polka dots. She hates orchids. Like people could think of things in response to that question. I can't even remember a question.
00:38:43
Speaker
You know, I ask people like, like always, you know, because you want specific conversations, you want as much detail as possible. So you would ask people, you know, what was this conversation like? Or what did she say about that? And like, Anna just doesn't talk about a lot of stuff. So a lot of those questions didn't get me that much.
00:39:03
Speaker
But that still is revealing to understand that like, okay, something happened. It seems to the outside world to be a big deal. And Anna never talked about it with anyone who was close to her. That reveals something about her.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah, no, that sounds incredibly interesting. And 250 interviews, that's an immense amount of work. I'm really excited to read the book. And I know we're coming up on time, Amy. I feel like I could pick your brain for hours.
00:39:35
Speaker
I'm so grateful for all the everything that you shared.
Follow Amy O’Dell
00:39:39
Speaker
If folks want to follow you on sub-stack or socials or follow your work, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? And we'll throw all these things into our show notes.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, so the best way for people to keep up with my work and what I'm doing is to follow me on Substack at AmyOdell.substack.com. And I have all my socials linked in my Substack. I'm on TikTok at AmyOdellWriter. And I'm on Instagram as well. So those are the main places where I am. But I would love for people to follow me on Substack at AmyOdell.substack.com.
00:40:20
Speaker
All right, we'll get it in there and Amy, thank you again. I learned some great things from you and I'm so appreciative. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
00:40:35
Speaker
Thanks for listening to our chat with Amy. Next week, we'll be talking with Brianna Delaire, a coaching enablement manager at Wayfair. And we'll make a few little plugs here. To support the show, you can rate, review, and subscribe. Those things make a big difference, and we really appreciate it. And if you like this conversation, you might like my fledgling newsletter, also called Content People. We'll throw a link in the show notes, and you can subscribe if you're interested.
00:41:00
Speaker
And if you'd like another newsletter to subscribe to, consider Braftons. We have almost 100,000 marketers who subscribe to our newsletter and get a lot of really great content. Check it out in the link in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. And if you want to get in Dutch, you can email us at contentpeople at brafton.com.