Why aren't there any podcasts about mediocrity? Interviews with those who have achieved moderate success, financial sustenance, and the chance to practice their art while receiving only enough encouragement to convince themselves that all their toiling is worth it.
Probably because no one would tune in. Our society, after all, has a fetish for thrilling specialness. Fantasies of exceptional destinies and individual successes are the leitmotifs of all our media today.
At The Church in Sag Harbor on Saturday, an audience of about 90 were treated to a live recording of the podcast "She Pivots," hosted by Emily Tisch Sussman, in a series that features "candid convos" with women, their stories, and how a professional or personal pivot led to success. Bobbi Brown, the legendary founder of her eponymous beauty brand, was the guest on this episode, due to be aired in October during the podcast's second season.
Ms. Brown and Ms. Sussman are part-time and full-time East End residents, respectively, and there's certainly nothing mediocre about either.
The latter has a lengthy and impressive resume as a leading political strategist, including her role as the vice president of campaigns at the largest Democratic think tank in Washington, D.C. Her pivotal moment came, she said, after having three children in four years, the youngest being born at the start of the pandemic. Realizing that she could no longer strike a healthy work-life balance, she quit politics to become a podcast host. (Umm, Ms. Sussman is also a Tisch family heiress, which could come in handy in a pivot to hosting a podcast, a medium that's notoriously difficult to monetize, especially for those not named Harry and Meghan.)
Ms. Brown barely needs an introduction, with a name that's neon-lit in every department store's beauty section and in airport duty-free shopping zones around the world. She created an empire around her "no-makeup makeup" look in the 1990s, and the company was acquired by Estee Lauder Companies in 1995, when Leonard Lauder called to say, "You're beating us in all the stores, and I want to buy you."
From there, Ms. Brown pivoted so often and in so many directions that listening to it all felt like whiplash. There was a stint at Yahoo, where she started a magazine; opening a boutique hotel in Montclair, N.J., a collaboration with her longtime husband, Steven Plofker, a real estate developer; in 2020, she launched Jones Road, her newest beauty brand of clean, high-grade formulations to once again give women that honestly-I'm-not-wearing-any-makeup look.
Even Ms. Brown had a tough time keeping track of her endeavors on Saturday, and turned often to Mr. Plofker, who was in the audience, to fact check on dates, ages, and other timeline details. "See, that's why I keep him around. He's the numbers guy," she joked.
But Ms. Sussman was there to define success, and rightly so when seated across from one of the most successful women in the world. "I've actually always wanted to interview Bobbi Brown," Ms. Sussman told The Church gathering, in her voluptuously strident voice. "Because she exemplifies for me this idea that you can have a vision of success, of what looks like success, having a big business . . . but maybe finding a different kind of happiness, potentially more, in changing your version of success with the business that she has now in so many other ventures."
Ms. Brown, wearing her signature black-rim glasses and famously casual attire, never wavered from her tone of "Oh, that billion-dollar business," and insisted that what defines her was not work and success but being a wife, a mother, and a friend. "Like, my dear friends are here. And, like, honestly, that makes me choke up. Because that's what matters," she said.
The beauty entrepreneur spoke about selling her brand, which gave her and her husband the financial freedom to spend more time with their young family while exploring other business ideas.
"So, did that feel like your version of success?" persisted Ms. Sussman.
"Honestly, success is happiness. And, yes, I'm happy. I love what I'm doing. It's what I choose to do. I don't golf, I don't play tennis, I don't garden. I find work in business really interesting. And by the way, I don't work 8 to 7. I meet my friends, I have lunch with my family. I call people so I'm able to squish a lot of things in and have a life. That's success."
Ms. Brown, 66, is clearly not of the TikTok generation, where acting uniquely important is rewarded. Instead, she embodies the idea that regardless of how titanic her successes, there is still honor in the normal life well lived. Because, a normal life, with its normal joys, its normal disappointments, its normal routines, is the fate most of us can expect. And, as fates go, it's not so bad.
