Charlie’s Toolbox

Amy DuBois Barnett made history as the first Black woman to lead a mainstream American magazine, with editor-in-chief roles at Ebony, Teen People, and Honey. 

Her debut novel If I Ruled the World follows Nikki Rose, the only Black editor on staff at a major fashion magazine in 1999, who walks away from a boss who tells her Black girls don't sell magazines and takes over a struggling hip-hop magazine instead, with six months to save it and prove what she's capable of.

Amy joins the podcast to talk about writing a character who came from her own history, the industry politics that shaped both the book and her real career, and what it took to finally put this story on the page.

Learn more about Amy: https://amyduboisbarnett.com/

Get her book: https://www.amazon.com/If-I-Ruled-World-Novel/dp/1250378141

Follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyduboisbarnett/

Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amyduboisbarnett/

Charlie's Toolbox is an institution for women choosing themselves, and this episode is proof of what that choice can actually build.

 

This episode sits down with Les Alfred, host of She's So Lucky and former host of Balanced Black Girl, who spent eleven years building a career in wellness before turning that experience into a media company built entirely on her own definitions of success. She walks through the real bar she set for herself before she let herself quit a job, the first dollar her show ever made and where it came from, and the decision to retire a brand that was already winning because it had stopped being true to what she wanted. She also breaks down what actually pays in this business versus what people assume pays, and what it really means to create your own luck rather than wait for it.

 

This conversation is proof that the life on the other side of choosing yourself has actual numbers attached to it, and Les hands over the ones that mattered most to her.

 

Follow along with Les and She's So Lucky here: https://www.shessoluckypodcast.com/

 

If this conversation moves something in you, that is exactly what Charlie's Toolbox exists for. Join the community https://linktr.ee/charliestoolbox of over 100,000 women choosing themselves at charliestoolbox.com subscribe to the Substack for the frameworks behind every episode and follow along on Instagram and TikTok for the conversations that continue long after this one ends.

You know that lightness certain women carry, the kind that lets them keep moving without a fall ever threatening who they are, and the theory behind it starts with one refusal: the refusal to believe the bottom is a place you live.

This episode gets into what separates a woman whose identity survives a public failure from one who doesn't, using Madonna and Eartha Kitt as the throughline for the three things that make a fall survivable instead of permanent, and why the lowest point in your story might be the exact material the next version of you gets built from.

Find the full show notes, essays, and community at https://charliestoolbox.kit.com/b393ccc7f6

Subscribe to Charlie's Toolbox on Substack for the written companion to this episode, the full practice layer, and the deeper frameworks: https://charliestoolbox.substack.com

Join The Firsthand, the free weekly newsletter, every Thursday: https://charliestoolbox.kit.com/00fbe52663

If you're in the middle of your own reinvention and need the framework for it, Start Knowing Yourself Again is where you start: https://stan.store/charliestoolbox/p/the-firsthand-self-starter-kit-

And if the fall you're rebuilding from had a man at the center of it, Decenter Men gives you the tools to make sure it doesn't again: https://stan.store/charliestoolbox

New essays drop every Monday on Substack, free for all subscribers. Paid members get the full toolkit, extended frameworks, and community.

What does it look like to choose being liked over being right, and what does that choice actually cost you?

This episode pulls apart a truth most people never get to examine on purpose: the difference between the kind of right that gets you fired and the kind of right that gets you into a fight nobody needed to have. Using real examples that are playing out in culture right now, this conversation unpacks why competence alone was never going to be enough, why some people accept the alienation as the price of staying correct, and why the road that looks easier is actually a set of learnable behaviors rather than a personality trait you either have or don't.

If you've ever walked away from a room confused about how you ended up the villain when you were technically right, this one is for you.

New episodes drop every week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Get in touch with yourself through our products at Charlie's Toolbox (@charliestoolbox) on Stan, linked here: https://stan.store/charliestoolbox,

Or become a paid member of our community on Substack at https://substack.com/@charliestoolbox for the extended breakdown and further reading.

You know the specific sadness of sitting in a room asking yourself if romantic love is something you will simply never have, and underneath that question is a quieter one you have been avoiding, which is what happens to your capacity for delight when your days are structured entirely as things to get through instead of things to look forward to.
 
This episode gets into the difference between the whimsy dating gives you access to and the whimsy you are capable of building for yourself without it, why a self-made prison pushes women back toward romantic love as the only available source of feeling alive, and the specific practice for relearning what actually delights you after years of outsourcing that answer to whoever you were dating at the time.
 
Find the full show notes here: https://app.notion.com/p/charliestool...
 
Subscribe to Charlie's Toolbox on Substack for the written companion to this episode, the full practice layer, and the deeper frameworks: https://charliestoolbox.substack.com
 
Join The Firsthand, the free weekly newsletter, every Thursday: https://charliestoolbox.kit.com/00fbe... New essays drop every Monday and Wednesday on Substack, free for all subscribers. Paid members get the full toolkit, extended frameworks, and community.