Noelle Faulkner

Director Peck here and our next guest is a very special one. Writer, cultural intelligence strategist and researcher Noelle Faulkner is  an enigma. Like a ninja scribe who slinks through luxury supercars, Noelle is flown to the far ends of the earth because her word smithery is second to none. She flicks between automotive, tech, fashion and pop culture freely with Vogue Australia, ELLE, GQ and Esquire among her regular clients.

Noelle has been ruffling feathers in the automotive media world for years now. She has not always been well received by her colleagues, some of them seemingly threatened by the change she represented, Noelle has infiltrated the automotive media boys club and is now one of the most in-demand automotive writers in the country. She is one the hardest working journalists I know and even though Instagram might convince you her success is effortless, I know Noelle’s relentless pursuit of the story is no walk in the park. This is a must-read chat!

Explain your job to us?

I work as a writer and cultural intelligence strategist and researcher specialising in automotive, culture and the future, and how those things combine and relate to each other. But I just like to say that I write about and bring fresh viewpoints to things that  move us physically, emotionally and towards the future. 

Why cars?

Few things sit at the intersection of design, sociology, innovation, identity, culture and business that are also just so cool and interesting. 

Oh, and it's hereditary: my mum loved fast cars, my grandma loved fast cars. I was doomed to really, really, really love driving from birth.   

How long have you worked in motoring media, and what did you do before that?

Prefacing this with the fact my place in motoring media is a bit left-field. I kind of occupy the void between traditional automotive media and lifestyle/fashion media, so I’m the gal someone might come to when they need that gap to be filled in a way that speaks both languages. I’ve been writing about cars for around seven-ish years. My background is in fashion magazines—I’ve been a beauty editor, a culture editor, lifestyle editor, features editor and a freelance features writer.    

What is the pathway to your job ie. what did you study, formal training, courses etc? Perhaps you fudged your way through like me! I know you didn't hah.

Honestly? The pathway I took was really something I forged on my terms and not at all linear, not efficient.  After school, I studied sound engineering and music production but realised very quickly that the industry wasn’t for me, even though I loved music and the technical side of it. Ironically, the main reason I left music production was because of how male-dominated it was, which is hilarious considering my job now.After that, I decided to chase my other love, fashion, and went to fashion school to study business. I thought maybe I’d be a merchandise planner or forecaster, but I really wanted to work in magazines. I had loved magazines since I was a child, and I’ve always been a pretty OK writer. So I shamelessly lent on every network and industry contact I could to get an internship. 

Internships were insanely exploitative back then (Devil Wears Prada is a documentary) and I worked full time for basically nothing for over a year and got to know every department. I supported myself by working as a bartender, door bitch or some other random job most nights and weekends. Eventually, after a series of editor redundancies swept through the publishing company I interned at, I walked into the new editor’s office and basically (and nervously) said, “I know every department of this magazine. You need help in all the departments you’ve lost people in. I’m cheap and I can span multitask.” And I guess she saw something in me, because that’s how I got my first fashion magazine job at Harper’s BAZAAR. It still paid peanuts by the way, but at least I was on the masthead.As for, how I got into car writing? I used to post a lot of vintage cars on Instagram and rant about F1, so a lot of people knew I loved cars. One day, a luxury fashion/lifestyle publication I was freelancing at was approached by a car company who wanted to sponsor some content. The editor pulled me aside and said something along the lines of, “We don’t know who to hire for this and the male car journalists,” who dominated the space at the time, “don’t speak our language. You love cars, do you want to give it a try?” Suddenly, I realised that was a job I could do and make it my own, and I worked really hard to learn as much as I could and it kind of snowballed from there. It hasn’t come without a tonne of grit, humility, sacrifice and tears, that’s for sure. 

What are some important skills required to be successful in your job? 

I would say tenacity, patience, resilience, creativity, communication and curiosity are the big six. 

You must be onto your 10th passport by now. How does all the travel take a toll on you, and how do you recuperate and bring yourself back to a place of calm after chaos?

Chaos is my natural state so I am very comfortable with it, probably worryingly so to some people. But I’m very used to travel now, it’s been many years of barely spending more than 30 days in a row in my own bed.  

Most of all, it takes a toll on my social life back home. Eg. missing important events and milestones for my friends and family, the impact it has on my personal relationships and planning things and buying tickets for something is near impossible! That said, I am lucky that I now have best friends all over the world and am very very good at keeping digital friendships/relationships alive.   

Top travel tips for busy women who fly a lot. Asking for a friend ;)

Prepare yourself for the timezone you’re flying to by scheduling your sleep (if you can) and eating your meals as closely to the time you will be eating them at your destination. I’m not sure why it works, but somehow conditioning the gut and your brain this way helps with jet lag on the other side. Also: Don’t drink alcohol on planes, do travel with a fibre supplement, don’t wear something on the plane you’re not ok with spilling shit on, and those little salt packets they give you? Ask for an extra one and pour it into your bottle of water for an instant electrolyte rehydration hack.   

Is work-life balance BS?

I think work-life balance means different things to different people. To me, it’s about keeping the toxic seed of resentment at bay. Resentment is a sign we’re giving more to something than we’re comfortable with or more than we’re getting back. In order to avoid resentment between work and life, you have to be very good at setting and practicing your boundaries, with others and within yourself. I am very protective of my creative process and my thinking time, because that keeps me sane. I work with integrity, I have a lot of self-worth so I don’t let people undervalue me —these things all help me to not feel shitty when work takes over my life (and it does more than I will admit to myself). 

Coping with anxiety at work, in life, and in general! How do you do it in this modern world? I listen to Headspace and recently paid a professional to help me sort mine out. But everyone is different. 

I’m not sure if I’m the best person to ask because I literally coined the phrase “chronically overwhelmed” about how much my cup spills over. That said, because my life is so chaotic I’ve learned to be very resilient and patient—not a lot fazes me for very long these days, and sometimes all I need to do is have a moment, lie on the floor and have a cry, then I’ll be OK to find a way forward. 

My mother always taught me to rise above things, people or thoughts that try to drag us down. So I’ve always practiced ways to get there. For many years, I’ve operated with two mantras: “Underthink it” and “Oops, oh well”. The first is as much of a creative thinking process as it is a meditation. The second sounds dismissive but is kind of like, “That happened. Can’t change the past, only what happens next.”

I meditate, I journal, I exercise and I also limit things that trigger my anxiety like alcohol, disorganised clients and toxic social media algorithms. Oh, and I listen to solfeggio frequencies and calming music on Spotify every night and morning, but i don’t recommend doing this if you’re not ok with your algorithm reading like the DSM-5. When I’m not dealing with things very well, I do have a brilliant therapist I will book myself in to see for a string of sessions. 

What are some of the assumptions people make about you and your work.. males and females?

Someone recently told me I make everything I do look really easy. That kind of bothered me because sometimes we do want the effort we put into things to be seen and recognised, right? I’m really aware of the privilege I’m afforded and what my work life looks like from the outside, but I guarantee that when it comes to describing what goes into my work behind the scenes, easy is not even in my vocab. But also, being a woman is to perform, no?