Bozoma Saint John is a businesswoman and marketing expert with over 20 years of experience at her back. She began her career with Spike Lee’s advertising agency, then went on to work for the likes of Pepsi, Apple Music, Uber, Endeavor, and most recently Netflix. Bozoma has spent the last few years of her life shaking things up; the American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement and American Marketing Hall of Fame inductee resigned from her C-suite job in pursuit of personal ambitions and growth.
Listen to the Podcast
Her latest work includes a widely-popular online tutorial “The Badass Workshop”, which teaches others how to unlock their full potential. Bozoma recently sat down with me to discuss her personal journey, mindset, and how it all feeds into her new book ‘The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival‘ released earlier this month.
View this post on Instagram
The Art of Self-Evolution
Let’s start off where everything changed; after holding Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Brand Officer positions at brand name companies for over a decade, Bozoma found herself at a turning point. No longer fulfilled by her day-to-day work, the impressive titles she had earned, or the corporate lifestyle she had grown used to, she felt at a loss of personal identity and in search of answers.
“Do I sit in this cog of a society? Where do I really belong?”
Those are existential questions many have asked themselves before, especially over the past two years as we’ve come off the heels of COVID-19 and its ripple effects on the workforce. The Great Resignation and The Great Reaffirm caused people to sit back and reevaluate what they were doing with both their personal lives and careers.
“What am I doing?”
“Do I actually love the thing that I’m doing?”
“Does this actually give me identity?”
“Does it mean something to me?”
“Is there a purpose in it?”
If the answer is no – as it was for Bozoma – the only way forward is change. She chose to leave her high-level job in favor of something different; a life where her identity was more than that of a high-value brand’s.
View this post on Instagram
The Only One That Knows, Is You
Deciding to make a major life change is great, but far from easy. There’s no blueprint or instruction manual for doing it, and the only guidance you have is your own gut. That’s a lesson that Bozoma learned first hand after leaving her C-suite job.
People expected the change to be some sort of intermittent pause within a greater career investment. But it wasn’t. She wanted to take time to invest in and understand herself. Learn new things. Build her own house. Release a book. And that’s what she did. The only challenge was dealing with others’ opinions that “there’s no social currency in that”.
Ultimately, Bozoma decided to lean upon her own instincts and pursue what made her happy. She sought to find new spaces, environments, communities and places to be where people would appreciate her authenticity as currency.
That’s not to say that her skills from the corporate world have been worthless though. Bozoma tells me that she prefers to consider her life change as an ‘evolution’ rather than a ‘pivot’. The difference?
While some people might say that they’ve chosen to ‘pivot’ their career by dropping everything they once worked on and knew, she’s evolved into something new by drawing upon her 20-plus years of experience. The reality is that ‘pivots’ aren’t even natural; no human being just wakes up one day and starts speaking a new language. Change is an ongoing process that requires an acceptance of who you are today and want to be in the future.
View this post on Instagram
There’s No Time to Waste
Onto the subject of her latest work, Bozoma tells me about her new book and the inspiration behind writing it. Far from the ‘no-brainer’ route of a badass business executive how-to guide, which she admits would have probably guaranteed her more success, she’s created a memoir detailing her personal struggles and late husband’s battle with cancer.
It’s an incredibly beautiful exploration of the human condition and the challenges that have changed her outlook on life over the years. The main prevailing theme is ‘carpe diem’ – treating every day like it’s your last.
“Well that’s morbid”
No, it’s not, she argues. Having lost the love of her life to cancer, Bozoma says that she’s more appreciative than ever of every day she gets to live. The experience caused her to shift her mindset from procrastination to one that asks, ‘what are you waiting for?’
It’s a good question that we should probably all be asking ourselves a little more often.
View this post on Instagram
Taking Action On Your Ambitions
Life is unapologetically blunt. Things can change overnight, crises can happen within seconds, and loved ones can receive a diagnosis and pass away within a matter of six months.
So much can happen in such a short amount of time. Why aren’t we living our lives by those same standards?
It’s often once we lose the ability to take action that we want it the most. Remember the throes of the pandemic? Everyone had some sort of goal or thing they wanted to do once things reopened. Months on, and few people have actually fulfilled that ambition.
Bozoma takes a holistic approach to beating procrastination; rather than a focus on speed alone, an urgent life to her means being intentional about your time and energy in the moment. She strives to make change through her everyday decisions by asking herself ‘what do I want right now?’; ‘what can I do to achieve that thing?’
The intention is to come out of life being able to say that you did exactly what you wanted to do and have no regrets. While carpe diem can sound cliche, it’s a lesson that Bozoma Saint John has taken to heart and applied to her own life – encouraging all of us to do the same.
The world needs more people who are willing to seize opportunity rather than wait for it. So what are you waiting for?
Enjoy!
FOLLOW BOZ:
instagram | twitter | website
Listen to the Podcast
Subscribe
