Bozoma Saint John Shares the Funny Way Jimmy Fallon’s Wife Helped Her Land On Brand Gig (Exclusive)

Before Bozoma “Boz” Saint John was making a name for herself as a cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, she was making marketing magic happen in boardrooms at Netflix, Pepsi Co., Apple and Uber.

Now, she’s sharing her expertise with eager contestants on the new NBC competition show, On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. It’s a full circle moment she can’t even quite wrap her head around.

After 25 years working in marketing as a C-suite executive, Saint John walked away from “traditional corporate life” a few years ago. She decided she wanted to publish her memoir and follow an entrepreneurial route by starting her hair and hair care company, Eve by Boz. “I have famously said, I don’t write five-year plans or 10 year plans — I don’t even write a year plan because I feel like I should just follow the intuition of what I’m supposed to be doing,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.

Following her instincts have always paid off for her. But she says, once she became interested in joining RHOBH, she was warned that the Bravo reality show might “ruin” everything she’s accomplished. “I was like, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be that. It doesn’t have to be a bad experience. I can make my experiences exactly what I want to.’ I’ve done that for 25 years and it has proven true.”

As luck would have it, being a part of the Housewives universe (which she joined last year for season 14) actually brought her to her next gig with On Brand.

“Jimmy had sold the show two years prior and was trying to find a co-host and had seen a bunch of CMOs, but nobody was really clicking,” Saint John tells PEOPLE. “And so when [Fallon’s wife Nancy Juvonen] suggested that, ‘Hey, look, I just saw this woman on Real Housewives, you might want to check her out.’ He was like, ‘What, a Housewife? That’s not the vibe I’m going for.’ But he did his research and he even bought my book [The Urgent Life: My Story of Love, Loss, and Survival] and listened to it on Audible.”

“And I am so amazed by the way everything has sort of worked out, but for me it’s the only way to go because if I had listened to people who said, ‘Don’t do the Housewives, don’t do…’ I wouldn’t be sitting here right now having a show on NBC with Jimmy Fallon,” Saint John says.

While she hasn’t met Juvonen yet, Boz admits: “I owe Nancy a huge hug.”

In its debut season, On Brand follows 10 creatives who work for Fallon’s marketing firm, pitching and conceptualizing ideas for top tier brands like Dunkin’ Donuts, Marshalls and Southwest Airlines to name a few. The show (which premiered on Sept. 30) already became the number 1 unscripted show across television in its time slot.

Despite the competitive nature of the show, Saint John says it does get emotional. “The thing about marketing that sometimes gets missed, people think it is just like sales, sales, sales. And it’s like, no, it’s not that. It’s real storytelling,” she explains. “You’re trying to connect with people on products or ideas that they will feel personally connected to, that is the magic of marketing.”

In fact, Saint John teases that Fallon gets “very emotional” this season. “He cares very deeply about ideas,” she says, adding that she loves the way they balance each other out. “I’ve been in the seat where I have to give sharp, critical feedback, because when you waste time with ideas that aren’t good, it costs a lot of money. It balances with Jimmy’s excitement and passion with trying to make every idea work.”

She has plenty of tips to pass down. One of the many meaningful campaigns she worked on during her tenure was one that introduced Netflix’s hit Squid Game to the world.

“The creator of Squid Game had been trying to sell his show for 12 years prior to that moment at Netflix,” Saint John says. “And I took a majority of my budget and put it behind his show, this little tiny Korean weird drama/comedy/horror. It was such an amazing victory to be able to make that decision and then have it succeed.”

These days, she’s enjoying wedding planning (fiancé Keely Watson proposed on Aug. 29) as she gears up for the return of RHOBH with season 15 and celebrates the one-year anniversary of her brand, Eve by Boz.

As for what else is next in her career… she’s not too worried.

“I feel like people give me credit for having a strategy on my career that I don’t deserve because I didn’t do that. And this is why I preach about intuition and following your feeling and your desire and not listening to the gallery of people,” she says, which sometimes might even include not listening to friends and family.

“My sisters or my best friends, they will tell you that I don’t ask them for career advice. Sometimes it’s your loved ones who are telling you not to take the job, or not to leave or not to do this or that because they want to protect you. They don’t want you to fail,” she explains. “But a lot of times that risk in moving is actually what then advances you in your career.”

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She concludes, “I’m hopeful that if people are looking at me and saying, ‘Oh, I want to have a successful career like that.’ Or, ‘I want to pattern my career around that.’ I’m like, ‘No, don’t do that. You got to listen to your intuition and that’s what’s going to get you to success.'”

New episodes of On Brand air Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET and Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and can be streamed on Peacock.