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In select stores and at Lululemon .com in today's moments episode we're featuring one of the most iconic brand builders of all time the former cmo of netflix and chief brand officer of uber bosma st john bosma's perspective on marketing is fresh because it's not just about algorithms or trends it's about something far more powerful it's about curiosity curiosity about people why they choose what they choose what moves them what scares them and what makes them say yes in b2b marketing just like in life we're not talking to businesses we're talking to people so if you want to understand the real
edge behind influential marketing this is the moment to listen in your first sort of real significant career move seemed to be this encounter with spike lee's agency yeah so for people that don't know who is spike lee okay and how did that happen spike lee is blackety blackety black first of all all the blackness uh no but he he is a um film director really at his core filmmaker let's call it that because he certainly produces and does other things and writes um but he has a an advertising agency in new york uh when i was there was on madison avenue so madison avenue is like the place for advertising
in the world, right?
It's the place where the show Mad Men was made from.
So DDB is one of the biggest agencies and Spike had a JV with them.
What brought you to New York in the first place?
Curiosity. I graduated from Wesley University, which was in Middletown, Connecticut.
And it was just time to apply to med school.
And I really didn't want to.
And New York was was right there it was like an hour and a half from school and i really didn't have a plan yeah i just i just went trying to escape what i thought was my destiny and like many people say i think sometimes in this business i kind of fell into this but i think my destiny actually came to find me that's what it was i opened up and allowed for something greater that i didn't even know was possible to find me instead so many people are in in that chapter of their life where they're trying to find their destiny or trying to help trying to figure out a way to let their destiny find them
yeah when you look back and connect the dots as to how your career came to be and you think about that first moment where you you know you went to new york and then you're on madison avenue you're working for spike lee and you find you find your destiny or it finds you if your if your daughter um comes to you and says mom what advice have you got for me on finding my destiny like what have i got to do to actively forget about have you ever heard that statement like let go and let god no have you heard that before no it's a very christian thing i feel like in the like black church there's a lot
of that let go and let god you know as if god is just gonna just sprinkle magic dust over you you know and i'm like no i don't i don't necessarily believe that just as a plain statement i think the letting Letting go is an action.
You know, it's not surrender.
It's not like you just lay down and it's going to find you.
You're not going to find your destiny sitting on the couch. You know, the letting go for me is like the letting go of preconceived ideas about what it is that you are going to do.
Letting go of, sometimes you're like trying to do something and keep hitting a wall.
you're just like oh if i just hit it one more time it's gonna break sometimes it's like you know that's a cement wall right if you just move five feet to the right it's actually plaster and you're gonna go right through it you know it's like sometimes just the letting go of this thought that you had which is like oh i'm going to do this thing right here is the magic and i'll tell tell you this, look, it didn't just happen at that stage in my life.
It's happening right now where, you know, I'm like, okay, well, I think I am done with my corporate CMO work.
I believe I'm finished.
So I'm going to let go.
Let go of it. I'm not going to be actively looking king for the next CMO job.
I want whatever is coming for me to come.
I'm going to allow space for it.
Now, it doesn't mean I'm just sitting around.
I'm also, you know, trying to polish other skills.
I'm trying to create, you know, because perhaps the next thing that's coming is somewhere more in that space.
I can feel it like in my spirit.
And that understanding of like your intuition.
And if you're listening to it, it's like a magnet.
It's going to just draw you closer to the thing that you're supposed to do.
And it has happened every single time, like every time without fail, like every job, every move I've made hasn't been because somebody said, oh, you know what?
This makes logical sense.
sense. One plus one equals two.
Sometimes I'm just like, but it's not math, though.
It's physics. It's not the addition.
It's the subtraction.
I'm just going to sit here and I'm going to get up and I'm going to go talk to this person.
And I'm going to talk to that person.
I'm going to sit back down again.
And I'm going to write this thing out.
And then, like magic, because I don't know how else to describe it, it's like the destiny appears.
I'm telling you, every time it has has happened every single time even when people were like oh that is never gonna happen like you're wasting your time i don't know why you'd go over there and do that i'm like i don't know something something inside i'm telling you telling me that this is the way to go i'm gonna go over there every time it's worked you work to endeavor big company that owned like the ufc and wwe etc yes yes yes um beats uber netflix apple apple oh yeah all the things it doesn't seem like there was a huge time for pause and for you know because you just seem to get right back
at it all the time i mean that's what it appears when you look at the chronological nature of these events yeah um how have all of these personal tragedies fed into your career and what role has your career continued to play in dealing with these personal tragedies yeah um well i think especially peter's death um made me impatient.
Impatient is the wrong word, but it kind of feels like impatience with life.
Urgent. Yes, urgent for sure.
The urgent life. Because I just have a much better understanding of not wasting my time or my energy.
When I look at your story and I see someone who doesn't hang around if they don't like something yeah you know um and this kind of brings on another point because there's contradictory career advice often we get it says you know you should stay somewhere long enough because if you leave too quickly then people are gonna look at your resume and think why were you only there for two years or why were you there for a little while but then if you know so like where do you sit on this um and when to know to quit and also there's this overarching phrase which is like quitting is for losers yes yes yes
yes oh gosh well look i get criticism of that all the time where people are just like oh well she can't handle adversity.
And I'm like, me? Are you out of your mind?
It's like, if there was a poster child, it would be me.
It would be me. Yo, no, it's not that I can't handle adversity.
I just put myself first. Are you selfish?
Yes, very much so. But that is not a bad thing.
I am at the center of my life.
life. No one is above me in my life.
No one, not even my kid.
And she knows that.
And I tried to instill the same in her.
No one should be above her in her life.
Because the thing is that like, look, the life that you're living is yours.
And I cannot be a great contributor to society.
And this sounds a little like counterintuitive, but I can't be a great contributor to society.
I can't be a good friend i can't even be a good mom if i am not living the life that i want to live if i'm not wholly happy in it so absolutely i'm selfish when you left uber your quota is saying you don't need to be the savior i think when referencing the state of the company because it was going through a very tumultuous time yeah you can save yourself too yes and save yourself first is what i should have said you know it's like it's all of the ways in which we think about it now right you get on a plane they're going through the safety demonstration they tell you to put your mask on first before
you help anybody else yes and in your life too yes save yourself first what was the career advice that you wish someone had given you you know like that young spikely receptionist be selfish in your life in your career think about yourself all of the time what does being selfish mean meaning that when you're in a situation that doesn't serve you you think of yourself first oftentimes we're in these situations that aren't serving us and we're thinking about how the other person's gonna feel but that meant that means that I have to be it's the uncertainty that that creates that scares people right
like well I can I've got this job and I quit it where am I gonna go and like what am I gonna do if I leave this relationship what am I gonna do where am I gonna go well but you should answer that I'm not saying that you quit without the answer I'm saying you quit you know it's like if you keep putting it off if you keep saying well I don't know what I'm gonna do so I'm just gonna then you're gonna waste your life away you're gonna be so unhappy you're gonna have the Sunday scaries all the time you're gonna feel the ick when you're with that person you are going to be unsatisfied with your life
and that is the scariest thing I do not want to be on my deathbed being unsatisfied with the life that I lived I could go tomorrow and I would be so satisfied with this life why oh because I've done the the things I've wanted to do now look I have goals it doesn't mean I don't have ambition it's not like I don't want to do the next thing I do want to go to Antarctica at some point I have not been yet you know but if I went now oh I've lived this life on my own terms like there's nothing that I did where I feel like oh man I should have made a different choice what are you good at like when you
when you do the diagnosis of your skill set and what brought you here because you've had these incredible incredible incredible korea yeah but you know when we're all bad at loads of stuff and i think typically people are good at like a couple of things yeah but that's enough yeah what are you good at i'm good at seeing the forest the whole picture and sometimes in a forest you know that like oh you have to clear this area in order to make space for the little village because then those villagers can take care of the rest of this part of the forest that is like burning you know what I'm saying
but sometimes people are only down at the trees and then they can't see the burning part and they can't see that they should clear over there so that those people can get to the fire I can see the forest I can I can see the whole thing and I can see like okay this needs to move there this it's helped me so much in my career for sure it's like the change changemaker and how does that make you a great marketeer because i never look at a problem just as the problem you know it's like when i got to uber the problem was that there was a huge campaign that was like delete uber right people are like
oh they're mad at the company because of lack of diversity in the c -suite and they treat women horribly and they're not paying the drivers and oh it's unsafe even to get in the car and i went in and it's like if i had just tried to like Like, go after one thing.
It would have been whack -a -mole.
You know, everywhere I go, okay, pop this one down and this one pops up.
You hit that one and that one pops up.
But I can see the forest. I can say, ah, this is not an issue about whether or not Travis Kalanick hates women or hates black people.
This is not about whether or not your driver is going to kidnap you.
This is about trust. Do you trust the CEO of the company?
Do you trust the driver when you get in the car?
Do you trust anything about this whole situation?
Self -driving cars, you trust any of it?
If you don't trust it, nothing I do is going to make you like the company.
I could fix the issue of like, hell, make half of the C -suite people of color and women, and you would still be like, yeah, but they're going to kidnap me.
The best people you've encountered in marketing, what do they have in common?
They're great storytellers.
They can make you believe anything.
Those are great marketers.
the ones who make you believe that you put on a pair of nikes and somehow you're now lebron james and how do they what what constitutes what makes a great story um it's close enough to the truth for you to believe it yes well when i put on any pair of shoes i'm no lebron james but you probably walk more confidently it's true so maybe you weren't lebron but you're better version of yourself self if I if I want to be a great marketer and I'm currently not what would you you know if Liel comes to you and she goes mom I want to work in marketing what's the best um what do I need to do to become a great marketer
what would you say to Liel um be more curious about people ask a lot of questions about people why do they do the things they do why they like the things and ask keep asking the questions like you've got to be really curious about people in order to be a great marketer because you can't just rely on what you know in your experiences even though though, I do say that you should be a focus group of one.
It's like, if you like the thing, maybe somebody else will like the thing.
If it makes you laugh, maybe somebody else will laugh.
If it makes you scared, somebody else is going to get scared.
If somebody's inspired, somebody else will be inspired.
I believe that. But you also have to be really curious about why people choose the things that they choose, why they like the things that they like.
If you're not curious about people, you're going to suck at this job.
What's the most important thing we've not talked about?
And I really want to focus this a little little bit more there's going to be so many young people not so young people that are listening to this conversation now they look at your career and they go i want to walk that path i you know i want to get to i want to be the cmo of yeah the biggest companies in the world yeah ceo of this company what's your parting words to those people gosh that's such a hard one because the thing is that there is no there is no path you know if somebody tells you like do these steps in order to get to where I've got, they're lying to you.
You're not going to get there based on the things I've done.
The only way you're going to get there is by listening to yourself, is by following your intuition, is by doing the things that you're really good at and leave the rest of that stuff that you're not good at, that other people are trying to advise you, leave that alone.
So if there's any advice, get to know yourself better.
That's it. We often confuse aspiration with admiration.
admiration we can I can admire someone without aspiring to walk their path and I think I think yeah I remember reading a poem one day about like the only great person you can be is the greatest version of yourself it's super cliche but it's no but it's unbelievably true because I could not be Steve Jobs or no Thomas Edison or Martin Luther King it's not it's not my greatness no exactly don't try to be me ever if this conversation today has challenged your assumptions in any way that's probably a good thing because that's where growth begins and if you're ready to start reaching people in a way that actually
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