Transcription
Hi, I'm Katie Pepper and welcome to Perspectives, which is a series of inspiring conversations with remarkable working women. And today I am really looking forward to my conversation with Susan Riley, Head of Brand for Stylist.

Susan, welcome. Thank you for having me. So people can't see you, but I'm looking at this beautiful wallpaper behind you. It's very stylized and fabulous. It's covered with pigeons for those who cannot see. And I've had it up for 10 years and my daughter is 10 and she has a fear of birds, specifically pigeons. And I feel like this wallpaper is responsible. And maybe when she was in her high chair or whatever, it loomed over her and now she has, what is it called? Ornophobia or whatever it is. And so yes, this wallpaper is actually responsible for that. So yes, very good. There you have it. And that could lead into a working mother conversation, but that's not where we're going right now.

Could we actually start by just talking a little bit about your career journey up until a stylist?

Sure. So I have spent the last, I guess, 20, 25 years in magazines in London. So following my English degree and postgraduate degree in magazine journalism, I entered the entertainment magazine industry actually first. I worked on TV titles in London and then I worked in a lot of teen and women's magazines as well. So we don't have a lot of them now, but teenage magazines used to be a fantastic marketplace, particularly in London and great training ground for journalism because you had everything from celebrity interviews and you'd be interviewing pop stars one minute, the next minute you'd be doing really quite emotional interviews about quite sensitive topics the next. So a lot of London editors actually started out in the teenage space.

So I worked on a couple of titles that were huge here:





Miz



Sugar



More Magazine

So as I got older, so did the audiences that I wrote for. And so, you know, went from being a writer to a features editor and then kind of worked my way up there. You call it the masthead in a magazine where you get more and more senior gradually. And then in 2009, I was the launch deputy editor on a groundbreaking launch called Stylist Magazine.

And what was so fresh about Stylist at the time was not only was it premium content that was delivered free to kind of city women who were kind of going around their jobs that used to be distributed free right near our tube stations, our train stations where women were going to and from work. So at that point, no one really got anything of really good value free. So that was like one thing. It was called freemium. That was the term that our CEO at the time came up with.

But more importantly than how it was distributed was its tone of voice for women. It was a real breath of fresh air back in 2009. You know, at the time, women's media was full of weight loss plans and, you know, cellulite ridden thighs being circled on celebrity, you know, gossip magazines. And it was really quite a stifling environment for women, actually. And Stylist came along in a very empowering way and spoke to women as they wanted to be spoken to.

We had lots of rules for what we did and didn't do:





We didn't do diets.



We didn't do celebrity gossip.



We talked about all the facets of womanhood and all the great bits that we love talking about, you know, the fashion, the beauty, the travel alongside really serious, more kind of unisex style journalism, actually more kind of newspaper style reporting on the topics that mattered as well, you know, culture, politics, business, career, all of those things.

And so, yeah, since 2009, I have been working for Stylist. It's a brand that has massivelyevolved and grown and changed as time has gone on. My titles have changed throughout that, you know, over the last 15 years. And my titles have changed throughout that. Over the last 15 years, I've been Deputy Editor, I've been Editor. I have launched a new publication. I have worked on lots of different launches for Stylists because now we go across email newsletters. We're online, we're on social, we have so many events, we have campaigns. The role has grown and evolved over that time and now I'm Head of Brand, which essentially means that I am in charge of storytelling, brand storytelling.

So in terms of the partnerships that we have with the likes of Google or Yappelt or Pandora or any of the brands that come and work with us, I'm kind of very much spearheading the ideation of what we do there in that space in terms of how we meet client objectives but also speak to women how they want to be spoken to.

But more importantly at the moment is Think Stylist. I have recently launched an insight consultancy off the back of our brand. Stylist is very, very famous for knowing its audience inside out and so implicitly that now we would love to help brands speak to women in a real, authentic, necessary way in the same way that we speak to our audience in terms of content and events. So that is kind of my priority at the moment and it's a really exciting journey.

I'm sorry, I've just spoken at you for about three minutes. It was very interesting and perfect background and that leads me to a lot of different questions. Maybe where we could start is with Think Stylist and I was sent findings from a report that seemed incredibly interesting and kind of upsetting about the evolving financial behavior of Gen Z and millennial women. Talking about that nearly half of women aged 25 to 45 are struggling with a joy deficit with little in their budget for fun and leisure.

And I know that there's different ways than they address that, but what exactly is a joy deficit?

Yeah, well, but before that, the context to that big financial report, we called it the F word and obviously money is a huge topic for women, for all of us right now. You know, whatever country you live in, we're going through a big kind of crunch. People have got less money than ever before, it feels like. Certainly in the UK, that is the case. Living standards are slipping, wages are not getting higher, everything's becoming more expensive.

And when we did a report a couple of years ago called Women at 30, where we really kind of got under the skin of that very seminal decade of being in your 30s, which is when most women, if they have kids, choose to have kids, buy a house, get married. You know, it's a very kind of seminal decade. In that report, money came out as the biggest challenge for women at that time.

And so as the financial climate got even worse in the UK, we were like, right, we've got to look into this. Like, what are the implications of all of that? And so Think Stylist did a big study with about 1,500 women, but also we had lots of focus groups where we really kind of spoke to women and got into all of the issues.

And one of the things that we found was, as you quite rightly highlighted, the joy deficit. Now, what is a joy deficit? It's on two levels, I guess. So the most simplest level is it's getting more expensive to have fun, right? The things that you really enjoy doing are just being hyped up in value. So it kind of feels like you have to spend a lot of money in order to have fun.

And I guess on a more nuanced level, what we found from our research were that women were cutting out the little bits of joy in their day, in their week, without even realizing it. So we talked to women about how baking and cooking brought them immense joy, but actually they weren't doing as much of it because ingredients were just becoming so expensive.

Other women spoke about how they were no longer visiting their grandparents who lived in Bristol, which is about a two-hour train ride from London, because the train prices were so high. So actually people were traveling around the UK less to see their loved ones and their families. People were speakingabout how because they had to kind of focus on the basics, they had cut out their singing lessons or their craft lessons or whatever. Their singing lessons, or their craft lessons, or whatever it was. And it's essentially all of those little stress relievers that allow us to unwind, that allow us to connect with others, were just being cut out of their schedules because of financial reasons. And they hadn't really thought about the impact that cutting out all of those, what they called unnecessary extras, was actually having on their day-to-day.

And so this is a generation, millennial and Gen Z women particularly, where stress levels are very high already, anxiety levels are very high. They are called Generation Burnout for a reason. And so when you've got that already, and you've also got a variety of mental health issues on the back of the long tail of COVID as well, to have all of this joy deficit eating away at people with their financial habits is chipping away and kind of having that impact.

So we really just wanted to point out those small ways in which joy was being equipped from people's lives because those are the bits that people rely on, like I say, to unwind and to de-stress. And it's interesting because I think that age group also missed out, or really even a little bit younger to a little bit older, also missed out during the pandemic on all those years of socializing. They were missing out on a different type of joy that you get really from connecting with people, not online, but in person. And so all of these things sort of add up, I would assume.

And what is the thesis then or the conclusion that you're looking at is how brands can then tap into this and try to bring people joy in ways that don't break the bank?

Yeah, I mean, it's recognizing that actually people need a bit more joy in their lives. Obviously, directly after the pandemic, a lot of brands were looking at purpose. Purpose became this kind of big focus for brands. They needed purpose beyond product. And that still holds true. But I think that purpose doesn't have to be a heavy thing. It doesn't have to be like you're changing the world, actually. To bring lightness into someone's day is also a really good purpose.

So I think the end goal of this is to just remind brands of what women are lacking or experiencing and telling them that they can step into the void in different ways. And whether they step in with experiences or humor or value or resonance, that's really up to them and their brand. But it's like they do have a role to play here. And it can be really quite profound when got right.

Because going back to what you were talking about, about how content has changed and how stylists has been on the forefront of content. I read a recent feature in the Continuum where you talk about how that lean in style with almost a masculine energy that Sheryl Sandberg was promoting, where women were encouraged to have a seat at the table and be there for everything and really led to a lot of burnout.

So now it seems that there are different ways that to be healthy and your well-being is just as important when you're looking at your success as other values or different ways people have looked at it in the past. Would you say that's true?

Yeah, I mean, sure. I think people now are really kind of, they like brands who recognize that they have life goals and that they want balance out of their world, essentially. I mean, in the Continuum, we were talking about, I guess, the evolution of how we're speaking to women over the last decade. And I think that was in particular reference to, you know, 12, 13 years ago, when we talked about careers, it was always with a strong eye on productivity. It was kind of like, it was the heyday ofThe Apprentice. It was entrepreneurialism. It was kind of like, you know, and that is when the lean in, Cheryl Sandberg. Realize them. It was kind of like, you know, and that is when the lean in, Sheryl Sandberg type narratives were around. And of course, there were lots of great things about what she said in Lean In, really, you know, she was talking to women about advocating for themselves, about, you know, not holding themselves back.

But I guess it's shifted now because instead of leaning into the status quo, and really to a kind of male-centric corporate world, women now really want to lean into their own version of success rather than the one that has already been created in the world around them, right? So that is, I think, how things have changed. The corporate ladder is not, I mean, obviously some people, for some it feels very much something that they want, but for a lot of people they're kind of totally reimagining what success looks like for them.

And it might not be climbing the ladder, it might be stepping sideways, it might be leaning out a little bit, it might be surrounding themselves with a completely different energy rather than just leaning into what is already there. So I think that that's a huge shift in what women want, and also how we speak to them as well.

I love that you said that, and it makes me think about when I first started, Perspectives has been on for a very long time, and when I first started and I was looking at who I wanted to talk with, and I would say it needs to be successful working women, and that definition of successful, I hate to say looking back, was very specific. It was women who had reached a certain level, and I think over the years as I talk with different guests, my definition of what success has changed, and their definition of what success for them has changed as well.

What is success for you? Do you know what? You say that it's changed, it's shifting for me at this time. When success for me in my 20s was to be an editor, to be at the top of the masthead and be responsible for a brand or a title, that was very much what success looked like. Now I'm actually trying to work out what my new version of success is.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm a mother of a 10-year-old, a solo parent to a 10-year-old daughter, so what success is for me now is trying to prioritize her and myself at the same time. I haven't quite worked out what that looks like, but actually, as I enter my second phase of life, I'm thinking to myself, what is success to me now and what does that look like in the day-to-day? So it's a work in progress, and I can't promise to practice yet.

Well, I think that's it, right? Everything ends up remaining a work in progress because life changes in so many ways. Just to go back to something about burnout and joy deficit, I mean, you have been in the incredible position to see how women have evolved, how talking to women have evolved, and as we're just saying, what different metrics of success look like to different women.

Are there things that you have picked up from stylists, from talking with brands, for women to think about who do feel very burnt out or who don't feel as if they're as joyful as they might be in ways and can find little sparks of joy?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to advise on a capsule because there are reasons why people, different reasons why people feel burnt out. Some of it is productivity burnout. They're just doing far too much or the world that we live in is expecting far too much of them. It could be emotional burnout from a trauma or something that they have gone through. So there are different types of burnout.

I guess the good thing about burnout right now is that we're talking about it more. I think we recognize what it is. We recognize we're more acute to the signs of it. We are, you know, we're verbalizingit. Our language now is a lot more therapy-speak than ever. So, you know, it's become a more honest conversation and a lot of women are recognizing when they need to do something about it. So that is a good thing. And, you know, I think that seeking lots of different help in different ways, I mean, from a pure industry perspective, the wellness industry is booming right now and taking advantage of our levels of burnout. But I guess it's those daily habits actually that are going to hold true more than maybe one specific thing.

But for me, it's about maybe just being more realistic in what we try and achieve in a week or a day. There was this book that I saw that looked really interesting. I wrote it down. Hang on. It's called Time Anxiety and it's out in April by Chris Gillibow. And it's about how we can reprogram ourselves to not try and squeeze the most out of every single moment and kind of redefining that moment we had, that relationship we had with the clock, the ticking clock.

I think that, you know, the clock for women means a different thing anyway, because we've always had that kind of thing with age and fertility and we're always being kind of rammed that down our throats about, you know, what to do when because we're going to run out of time. But I also think a lot of the women that we've spoken to for Think Stylus post-COVID have got even a louder clock in their heads because, you know, COVID, the pandemic has left this legacy of us panicking that, you know, time is so precious and that we need to absolutely make the most of every single bit of it. And so it's led to this heightened time anxiety.

And therefore, we're setting these targets for ourselves and we want to wring the most out of life. But in doing that, we're kind of overloading ourselves in a way that has become unmanageable. And we've kind of lost sight of what is actually a healthy amount of productivity. I feel anyway. I'm interested to read the book.

And I also think that it's also just being a little kinder to yourself. Putting so much pressure on yourself. I also think, you know, we've done quite a lot on something called comparison complex, whereby the social media and everyone's lives that you're seeing, the beautiful homes, the amazing holidays, the incredible family bonds, the great job, you're seeing all of that like a big platter. And you're kind of like, oh, my God, I've got to have all of it. I've got to have all of it. And, you know, it's fine not to have all of it. It's OK just to have some of it.

And as long as you kind of pick the things that are most important to you, I think, you know, be purposeful in what means the most to you and go after that rather than try and have a little bit of everything. That's great advice.

And just to add to that, do you have one piece of advice specifically that has helped you through your life and career that you could share with us? It's a fairly straightforward one, I think, but it's listen to your gut. And I think that can happen in professional situations. It can happen in personal situations. But you know, you know when something's either not right for you or feels off or just doesn't sit comfortably.

And sometimes we ignore it and we plow on anyway because we think it's the right thing to do. Or maybe you're going against the majority or whatever it is. But I bet any time you've ignored it, you've regretted it. And so it's about trusting it, listening to it and trying to decipher what it's trying to tell you before you make the wrong call, I think.

That's great advice. And well put. Susan, thank you so much for talking with us. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. And thank you for listening. Thank you.