Podcast: At home with Leaders – Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John

The business of being badass | Leaving a big job at Endeavor for a bigger one at Netflix in the midst of a pandemic | The role of the modern marketer | The marcomms challenge in sport, who’s done it best, and what comes next.

Episode 93 of the Leaders Sport Business Podcast features a conversation with new Netflix CMO Bozoma Saint John (discussion starts at 8:42). Saint John is one of the most impactful marketers in modern corporate America. Her resumé reads like a Fortune 500 roll call: leading marketing roles at the intersection between consumer goods, tech, and entertainment at Pepsi, Apple, Uber and Endeavor presaged her current job as CMO of streaming giant Netflix, a role she took up at the beginning of August, one week after recording this conversation for Leaders.

Wherever she has gone across her career, Saint John has made a deep impression, her skill for brand storytelling allied closely to her own executive boldness and sense of personal authenticity. She is currently combining her new role with continued work on a series of podcasts co-hosted with TV journalist Katie Couric – Back to Biz with Katie and Boz – and the completion of a five-week set of digital personal and professional workshops – the Badass Workshop.

On the conversational agenda:

– The ‘authentic self’ and how to define it; bringing it to bear every day; and how you look and how you feel play into that;

– The business of being badass – the what, why and how behind the workshops;

– The job of the marketer and how that changed – and changed again – over the course of the pandemic;

– Lessons in shutting down and starting again from Back to Biz with Katie and Boz: guests include Kara Swisher, Judd Apatow, Mary Barra, Brian Chesky, and Ashley Graham;

– Zoom fatigue and communicating in the new digital-first age, and offenders who turn off mic and camera;

– The chutzpah it takes to start a big new job during Covid;

– What great leadership looks like today.

“I’m not trying to be the black woman version of the white man success. I’m trying to be successful as myself. People are curious about why I’m able to do that.” Bozoma Saint John, Netflix

• Episode 92: TikTok’s Harish Sarma
• Episode 62: M&C Saatchi’s Kate Bosomworth
• Episode 88: The USTA’s Stacey Allaster

Listen to the podcast below, and subscribe today on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, Spotify or your chosen podcast platform.