Scooter Braun He spoke for the first time about how he fought with suicidal ideation after his public dispute with Taylor Swift and a difficult divorce.
During a conversation about his mental health in the episode on Monday, June 9, of the podcast “Diary of A CEO” of Steven BartlettBraun, 43, began talking about The Hoffman Process, “it’s a week without a phone, without emails and intense work about your early childhood to understand why you are as you are and to give you tools to go out to the world and understand yourself,” he said. “The reason I was in October 2020 is because my marriage was falling apart.”
Braun recalled that the world thought he was “starting” because his clients, including Ariana Grande and Justin BieberThey were being very successful.
“I had a suicidal thought for 20 minutes where I said, ‘If my marriage is going to crumble, I will not be with my children all the time. I cannot control this. I will not be this perfect image that I have presented to the world. And if I cannot be this perfect image, I do not want to be here,” he recalled. “It was a very dark place.”
The record executive was able to identify their mental health deterioration and sought help.
“That is not me. I would never leave my children. I don’t want to leave anyone. What was that? The next morning a friend of mine called and told him about the night before. He called me back with another friend and said, you need to go to Hoffman (Institute Foundation),” Braun said. “They told me they could receive me in two weeks because there was a cancellation. That was the week of the album launch Dangerous Woman of Ariana Grande“
After talking with Grande, 31, who offered to move the release date of his album, Braun departed from “the busiest week of the year” for him to prioritize his health.
“I have spent all my life chasing these things, doing this, choosing this, choosing that life and choosing customers. I am at the top of my career however I wanted to kill myself last night. Something has to change. I chose to go to that place,” he continued. “The difficult really came after I went out. I ended up going through a divorce. I ended up going through all this different – but I was never depressed again.”
Braun added: “The most interesting thing that happened on the other side of this is that six years ago I was the biggest manager and I had the perfect marriage and everything that played became gold. Six years later I am divorced, I no longer manage and could not be happier.”
The musical manager clarified that he still has difficult days, saying, “it does not mean that they do not go and come. But I can be the father that I always wanted to be and the friend that I always wanted to be. It does not mean that things are not going to be difficult. I will suffer more things and pass them. But I am in a place that I understand better. It is as if it were a gift.”
Braun elaborated more about the progress he made later in the episode.
“The night before I had thought of simply turning off everything. It wasn’t even an idea that I would like to die. I just wanted the noise in my head to disappear. I wanted failure, disappointment and fear (disappeared). I was going to fail in my mind. I couldn’t control it,” he explained. “I had always been able to navigate out of failure and head towards success. A stop. But I had gone. What I found in Hoffman is that I had built this mask so big. I wanted to feel like myself again. I had not realized how far I had moved away from building this armor and building the mask.”
Braun found success after helping to discover Bieber, 31, in 2008. Then he worked with other high profile names in the music business, including Grande, Kanye West, Demi Lovato, J Balvin, Ozuna, Dan + Shay and the Kid Laroi. Braun retired from the management of artists in 2024.
In addition to being known for his work with Bieber y Grande, Braun gained notoriety to acquire Swift’s rights in 2019.
Swift, 35, later announced his plans to reimagine his past tracks after Braun paid more than 300 million dollars to acquire Big Machine Label Group. She bought again the rights of all her discography at the end of May.
“When I bought Big Machine Label Group, I thought I was going to work with all the artists there. I thought it was going to be something exciting. I knew Taylor (but) she and I had only met three times. One of the time it was years before, it was really a great commitment,” said Braun on Monday. “I had the feeling – this is where my arrogance came into play – that she probably didn’t like it because I was driving (Kanye and Justin). But I thought that once this announcement happened, she would talk to me, I would see who I am and we would work together.”
Braun admitted that he was grateful for the lessons he learned from his public dispute.
“The greatest gift I received from that was to understand that all the praise I had received until that moment were not deserved. All the hatred I received after that moment was not deserved because none of these people knew me. She did not know me. This person did not know me. This person who found me three times, did not know me,” he continued. “I can show respect for all of them because I don’t know them. So I can love them where they are. But the gift of pain was consciousness.”
In the middle of his drama with Swift, Braun’s marriage with Yael Cohen He was coming to an end. (The couple, who shared three children, were married from 2014 to 2022).
“I was going through something very personal shortly after. I was going through divorce and I simply felt it was one after another. But I look back and if those things would not have happened, I really think they are all gifts. Because when something is fair, you don’t respect it,” he concluded. “When something happens to you that you feel it is fair, you move. You feel justified because you saw it coming. When something happens to you that it feels deeply unfair and you cannot fix it, then you really have to look at everything and realize the role you played in this. So I am grateful.”
If you or someone you know are fighting or in crisis, the help is available. Call or send a text message to 988 or catea in 988lifeline.org.
