I'm the former Netflix CMO, a current 'Real Housewife', and cohost with Jimmy Fallon. I start my day by talking to God.

At 5:30 a.m., while the rest of Los Angeles sleeps, Bozoma Saint John is already in conversation with God. It's the practice she credits with keeping her steady as she balances running a hair care company, being a single mom to her sixteen-year-old daughter, filming Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, hosting a new reality show with Jimmy Fallon, and steering her career after Netflix.

Nearly a decade ago, Saint John, then a marketing chief for Apple Music and iTunes, became an internet sensation at Apple's 2016 World Wide Developer conference, where she led the crowd in a rendition of "Rapper's Delight." She went on to become Uber's Chief Brand Officer in 2017 and Netflix's Chief Marketing Officer in 2020.

Jimmy Fallon recently tapped Saint John for her marketing prowess to host his latest reality series, On Brand, which premieres on September 30 on NBC. The show follows ten contestants who are going "head to head in marketing challenges for real companies." The marketing executive is also a cast member of Bravo's hit reality series, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and is currently filming season 2.

Saint John also spends much of her time leading her new hair care company, Eve by Boz, which has created a line of wigs, extensions, and hair products.

Here's how Saint John spends her day. This as-told-to essay has been edited for length and clarity.

I wake up at 5:30 a.m. every morning, and I pray and meditate for an hour.

I've consistently woken up at 5:30 a.m. throughout my career to pray, meditate, or read — without checking emails or texts. I find that my ideas are very clear at that time in the morning, when I do a lot of praying. It's when I go to God. I'm usually thinking about something that I want to do and trying to get my mind on the right track.

Prayer is a conversation. Sometimes, I ask for things. Most of the time, I pray for discernment so that I can make the right decision or ask God to help me better understand a situation. Sometimes, I ask for helpers to show up so that I can solve an issue quickly, but mostly it's a conversation. Often, I feel like God is a homie and I'm just talking to God like I would talk to one of my girlfriends.

At 7 a.m., I go to the gym at least six days a week.

I like to go to the gym because it feels more motivating to have people around me who are also working out. But if I don't have a lot of time, I can work out in my home gym in my garage.

My workout is a mix of cardio and strength training. I usually run between a half mile and a mile to warm up and then hit the weights. So I like working arms and back probably twice a week, and legs and glutes, three days a week. Once a week, I do intense cardio — running and box jumps.

My workday starts with meetings for my hair company, Eve by Boz

Usually, my first meeting of the day is with Eve by Boz, my hair and beauty company. We've built a factory headquartered in Ghana, where we produce and ship globally. Our haircare products, which are formulated here in Southern California and Los Angeles, are also shipped globally.

I have always loved hair, and it has been a part of my corporate persona. But the Apple keynote was a turning point. It was the first time people pointed to my hair and wrote about it. It was like a political statement that I had worn my big, round, poofy afro rather than wearing a tight chignon at the back of my neck to appear more professional.

For me, hair has always been a part of my identity and how I show up, like the braids that I wore when I was Uber's chief brand officer. Some people would say braids are just for vacation, but I think braids are for the boardroom, too, not just for the beach.

I was also inspired by the fact that 80% of the consumer base for hair extensions and wigs is black women and women of color, yet we're not considered for innovation. You find extensions in textures that don't match women of color's hair textures.

During the day, I'm focused on talking to my teams in Ghana and the US, or my finance, operations, and PR teams. We're about to shoot our first anniversary campaign, so I'm focused on that right now.

The early afternoon is dedicated to anything creative, where I have to write or there's an interview I have to do, or if there's something for On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.

In the afternoon and evenings, I'm usually filming The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

I am currently filming for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a reality TV show on Bravo. I'll try to squeeze in work calls and meetings in between shooting at a restaurant or going to someone's home.

The biggest surprise about being on the show has been the relationships, because I just assumed that a lot of things were producer-led. But the truth is, we shoot consistently for three months, sometimes over three months. I talk to these women more than I talk to my best friends or my sisters.

You grow close, and the intensity of the relationship is accelerated. Even after my first season of the show, I walked away feeling like I had some really close friends. And it didn't stop when we weren't shooting. The funny thing is, when it was time to shoot again, it was like, "Oh, thank God we're back together."

On the show, conflict resolution was a really tough one for me because, as a businessperson and as a leader, you have to resolve conflict quickly because conflict costs money, causes issues, and impacts the team dynamic. One of the things that I had to learn was that two people can have conflict, and I can't always resolve it.

I know people wonder, "Why would she join this show?" I think it's very worthwhile to explore the complex relationships of women in their forties and fifties. The things we're dealing with, like aging parents and teenage kids, our friendships, our divorces, our new loves, our changing bodies, are inspiring.

If I don't have dinner for the Real Housewives, then I will have dinner with my daughter, Lael. I like to eat dinner at 6 p.m., the early bird special. I like to have my biggest meal at dinner. So that's usually rice because I'm African— a sauce-like accompaniment with beef, chicken, fish, or goat, and some kind of green vegetable.

Dinner with Lael is usually us talking about college prep and school, and sometimes a pep talk. I'm a single mom, and my job is to make sure that she always feels fortified.

Even though I'm out on a reality TV show, I'm very much an introverted homebody. I'd rather be snuggled on the couch with my daughter watching a show than out at a club or at a restaurant. I only have two gears. Either I'm in sweats and Jordans, or I'm in sequins and stilettos.

Before bed, I like to catch a show because I really love TV

My wind-down is usually catching up on a show. I love historical fiction, so the Gilded Age is a favorite right now, but I also like sci-fi. So I've watched Snowpiercer. During the Pandemic, I was the CMO of Netflix, and I remember working on this campaign and people thinking they were going to run out of Netflix shows. And I thought, "Are you kidding? There's no way you run out." I love Netflix, but I also love reality TV and watch the other Housewives shows.

For my nighttime beauty routine, I'm a drugstore beauty queen. I wash my face with the same Oil of Olay cleanser I've been using for 35 years, and I use Eucerin to moisturize. That's it.

I'm in bed by 9:15 p.m. and asleep by 9:45 at the latest. I don't look at my phone after I go upstairs, so most people in my life understand that I'm not going to answer something after 8:30 p.m. or before 9 a.m. If you need to get me outside those hours, it better be an emergency.