Bozoma Saint John

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183 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Bozoma Saint John’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The School of Greatness · Safe Relationship Choices Often Lead to Unfulfillment · 31 Jan 2025 podcast

And all of his regrets, everything that he wanted to do that he didn't get a chance to do was based on the logic of the steps to get to that thing that he never got to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Making the to-do list. And then, yeah. And then it's like, oh, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that. All based on logic. Life is not made of logic. Life is magic. It's the accidental encounters. It's the things that you can't explain.

The feeling that you get in your belly that makes you feel alive and glittery, or it makes you super sad, or you don't want to get out of bed, and the sky just looks gray. And then maybe one thing happens, you're like, oh, OK, I can do it. You know, that's life. And being open to that is actually what gives you the experiences.

So therefore, when perhaps you don't accomplish everything that was on your plan, you still feel really happy about the things that you did do, because it was also magical. You know, and I'm not talking about like these big firework things. I'm talking about the little stuff too.

You know, the new person that you meet on the way to somewhere, you know, or like the like meal that you had that you didn't think was gonna be delicious that you just really savored. It was just magically amazing, you know, and just being appreciative of those moments. So again, it's like the life is not just about like the big, big, big stuff. It's not the headlines.

You know, so to me, it's like logic is what I then throw out the window.

It's like, oh, I'm not going to live a logical life. I'm going to live a magical life. The kind that is open to all of the things I can't explain. You know, that like the writing down of the list and the making the steps. And I'm not saying that you walk around just like, oh, whatever happens today is what happens. You know, like, look, we all got to be responsible adults. Okay.

But the truth of the matter is that, like, how many of our plans have been stopped because of logic? The things that you said, like, ah, well, shoot, I can't do that because of this reason and that reason and that reason. And sometimes it's other people's logic that actually stops you from doing the things you want to do. And so I want to stop that.

I've been active in being like, every time I approach a new ambition or a new idea or like, oh, I want to take a trip here. And that logic starts to come in. I'm like, girl, where's that magic? You better just step out and let the magic find you. You know? And not stop yourself because the math is mathing.

No, it doesn't make sense logically.

Yes, to happen. Because I can't tell you how many things have happened in my life that don't make sense.

The fact that I've had the career I've had doesn't make sense. It's not logical. There's no stat. Even when you look at things like, oh, you know how many black women CMOs have had jobs for like Fortune 50 companies? There's no math. There's no data point because it doesn't exist. But I exist. So can you explain that? No, you cannot.

So opening yourself up to like these things is what actually creates your destiny to run the way that it should. I'll give you one example. When Peter died in December of 2013, I was at PepsiCo. I'd been there for 10 years. It was a great job. I'd done many iterations of things. And at that time, I was the head of music and entertainment marketing.

And so I had been part of the team that did the deal with the NFL. for the Super Bowl halftime show. I put Beyonce on that stage. It was huge. I had a great, exciting career. And then Peter died. And I looked around and I was like, man, I think I want to do more things. Am I going to sit here for another 10 years in New York City doing this? Or have I had enough of this?

And as I formulated that thought, I went to, I think it was NBA All-Star or something like that. And I met somebody that I knew very lightly who told me that Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre had started their company, Beats Music, off of the back of Beats by Dre, and that they were looking for a head of marketing, would I be interested? And the job was in LA. My husband had been dead maybe two months.

I had a four-year-old child that I was trying to figure out how to raise by myself. You know, like all these things. And so logic would tell you that, no, sit your down. You know what I mean?

situate your life, figure out how to be a widow and a single mom and the main breadwinner, like figure that stuff out, calm down, get some therapy, you know, just like sit and be quiet for a second, grieve, let a year go by and then figure out what you want to do. But instead I was like, it really doesn't make any sense for me to leave Pepsi, a long established company,

and go to Beats Music where it's barely a company.

I didn't know what music streaming was. I had no idea what that was. I had no idea. But I came and came to LA and took a meeting with Jimmy and he was talking about stuff that I had no idea about. And when I resigned from PepsiCo to take the job, Everybody told me it was a bad idea. It was when I tell you there was not one person who supported it. Not even my mother. No one.

Everybody thought I'd lost my mind. People thought I was acting out of grief. Maybe I was. But the magic was that that opportunity opened up the next 10 years of my life. It was the magic, the spark that I needed. It changed everything for me, Lewis. Everything.

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