Reinventing Yourself Through Reflection and Discovery

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Deborah Burns, Author of Saturday’s Child, who gives advice on how to reinvent yourself through reflection, discovery and immersion.

6/21/19 #2228

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:
"We're pleased to welcome Deborah Burns, author of Saturday's Child, and also founder of Skirting the Rules. Good to see you my friend. So nice to be here with you Steve. It's been a while. A long time. A lot of...? Many changes. Yeah. Many new roads. All good roads? All good. The book? Amazing. Describe it. So this is the story of my unconventional mother. And it's about growing up with her. She was a woman who was larger than life. Otherworldly. Beautiful. She looked like Rita Hayworth when she woke up in the morning, and it got better from there. And I started it as a love letter to her. She's now been gone 25 years. I'm an only child. And I danced around this goddess my whole life, and lost her too soon. But she was always in there. And I started it as a love letter to her. I was inspired to write a crazy journey. But inspired. And in that moment I thought that it would be so simple. I knew her. I knew all her moves. And I could just write her story. But when I started it, I realized, "Oh my God! It's about me. It's my story." Connect it back to your daughter. Yes. There was a trip where? To London. And it was a trip that happened that my daughter originated, and it was at a time when my life was changing in the magazine media world that I was in. I should make it... let me disclose this. You were at ELLEgirl? Yeah. You were the top...? Yeah. I was the publisher of ELLEgirl. I went beyond that. I became the Chief Brand Officer for ELLE Decor... Yes you did. ...and Met Home. And you made the mistake of hiring me to come in and do some communication training! I did... [laughter] Actually, the... I really don't make mistakes. No, I'm joke... So... [laughter] I'm joking! I'm joking! But that's how we first met? That is how we first met. Through our friend Nicky who... he knows who he is. And you leave the corporate world? Uh huh. But connect it back to your daughter. Because this is all about mothers and daughters? The book is definitely a... Yes. ...mother-daughter story. So the notion to write the book came at a time when my life was imploding. I had grown past our time together to be the Chief Innovation Officer for HFMUS. Yes. A global media company that ultimately sold to Hearst. And around the time when everything was kind of coming apart, and of course, the magazine world changing dramatically, it looked its digital future in the eye and sort of didn't know what to say next. That's right. And so..."