What All Leaders Can Learn from Taylor Swift

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

Anyone who’s been following pop culture over the past decade knows the story of Taylor Swift. An aspiring teen songwriter moves to Nashville and becomes a country music ingenue, then a country star. She crosses over into pop and becomes a star in that genre too, while also dabbling in indie rock. She wins multiple Grammys. She breaks album sales and streaming records, and then she does a two-year stadium concert tour that is an absolute sensation, the most popular and highest grossing of all time. At age 35, she is now probably the most famous woman on the planet.

That kind of ascent takes a whole lot of talent, no doubt, but it also takes business savvy, a clear vision, an innovative mindset, smart collaboration, and clever marketing. HBR’s own senior editor, Kevin Evers, has done a deep dive into what’s made Taylor Swift so successful, and he says there are lots of lessons for corporate leaders, and in fact, anyone trying to get ahead in their career.

He’s the author of the new book, There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. And he’s here today to talk about how to bring a little of her magic to your own organization. Kevin, congrats on the book. I’m so excited to have you here today.

KEVIN EVERS: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

ALISON BEARD: First, I want to make sure that you disclose this at the top. You are a longtime HBR editor, a very serious business journalist, but also a longtime Swiftie, thanks to your daughter Macy, right?

KEVIN EVERS: That is true. Yeah. My daughter is eight years old now. She’s been a Swiftie for the last four years or so. She’s a hardcore fan.

ALISON BEARD: And so, you’re bringing some fan biases to the table?

KEVIN EVERS: Maybe a little bit. I did go into this trying to write a book from a neutral and authoritative standpoint. But some of the fandom and my relationship with my daughter definitely played a little bit of a role in the writing, for sure.

ALISON BEARD: What do you say to people who might be initially skeptical that there are actually things everyday managers, and even C-suite leaders, can learn from this pop star, this once in a generation talent?

KEVIN EVERS: I’ve heard a lot of the skepticism. It did not take much soul-searching, I’ll be perfectly honest with you. Taylor Swift has been in the music industry for 20 years. She’s more successful and popular now than she was 20 years ago, and she was very popular 20 years ago. She’s a great songwriter. She’s exceptional at songwriting, and that’s contributed mightily to her success. But she has great entrepreneurial instincts.

And the fact that she’s a female pop star made it even more interesting to me, because the music industry is fickle, it’s a cutthroat market. But she’s been able to find success and scale that success and popularity multiple times.

ALISON BEARD: So, after doing all of this research on her rise in longevity, what is one key business applicable lesson that really stood out to you?

KEVIN EVERS: The first one is her fan obsession. She reminds me of Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos, in a very famous shareholder letter, I’m going to paraphrase here, said, “Our customers are delightfully dissatisfied. They may tell us that they love our services and that we’re doing a great job. But deep down, our customers always want more. And it’s our job to delight them and to use their dissatisfaction to drive innovation.”

And I think that fits Taylor to a T. She understands that superstars aren’t self-made, they’re created by fans. So, she goes above and beyond. She has sent her fans Christmas presents, she has invited fans into her home for listening parties.

And we saw this at the Eras Tour. She could have played two hours, two and a half hours and I think her fans would’ve been happy. But she plays three and a half hours. She devotes a mini set to every album in her career, except her debut. That’s going above and beyond. But this is the reason why she’s been able to build such long-standing relationships with her fans, because she doesn’t take them for granted, and she’s always looking for ways to delight them.

ALISON BEARD: Talk about how she figures out what her fans want next. How does she figure out how to not just adapt and change, but make the right changes, make the right decisions?

KEVIN EVERS: I think she has an innate sense of what they want, but she’s also a lurker. She’s online all the time, and she’s our first extremely online superstar. She’s used social media to great effect throughout her career. But she’s always lurking in those message boards. She’s always lurking on TikTok trying to understand what her fans want and trying to find new ways to delight them based on what they’re saying on social media. She’s notorious for doing things like this.

ALISON BEARD: And community building is a big piece of it too, right? So, what lessons can consumer-facing companies take away from the guerrilla way that she’s done that, made people feel as if they have an intimate connection to her even when she has millions of fans and followers?

KEVIN EVERS: Her fan community at this point resembles true-crime communities on Reddit. There’s so much speculation on what she’s doing. And Taylor has changed her strategies recently. She used to have a lot of direct contact with her fans on social media, and she doesn’t as much anymore. There’s more scarcity to her strategies these days. But that has actually increased engagement, because whatever she does, whether she wears something on an outing and gets shot by a paparazzi, or she’s at an event, whatever she wears, leads to a lot of speculation. And whatever she says on social media leads to a lot of speculation.

And a lot of it, she’s fueling this fire. She’s dropping hints in everything that she does, so every interaction that she has with a fan has potential meaning. And that’s really driven engagement, especially in this TikTok era. During the Eras Tour, between two and 300 million videos were viewed a day at the peak of the Eras Tour about Swift. So, she really has this innate sense of building curiosity and engagement with her fans.

ALISON BEARD: It’s almost like gamification of being a fan.

KEVIN EVERS: For sure. For sure. And it’s in her lyrics too. I don’t think she’s trying to game the system with her lyrics, but I do think that it leads fans to speculate. Everything she does increases some sort of engagement with her fans.

ALISON BEARD: Her initial fan base was this, at the time, untapped market of teenage girls who might be interested in country music. So, talk about how she knew that was a market to be tapped, and then how she convinced others in the music industry that she could be the one to do it.

KEVIN EVERS: This is a classic entrepreneurial story. She seized an opportunity that other people were ignoring. Let’s go back. She’s 14 years old, 15 years old, and she’s trying to make it in country music. And she had a very clear vision for what she wanted to do, and she was very headstrong about this. She wanted to write her own songs, which at the time was rare in country music, especially for someone her age. It’s usually done by professional songwriters. And she wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers, teenage girls. That was a market that executives and country music, based on data and based on past failures, said, “That market doesn’t exist.” And she wanted to put out an album as soon as possible.

And country music said, I think you need to wait, right? There’s no market for this. But she said, “I listen to country music. I’m not hearing songs that talk about my own perspective. My friends are listening to country music.” So, she was really close to her fan base, her customer base. While others in country music, they looked at the data and they looked at past experiences and they said, “I don’t think this is going to work.” But it did work. It’s a classic blue ocean strategy, and this is something that Marvel did also in the 1960s. She went after an audience that people didn’t think existed. And because of that, she found great success because she really didn’t have much competition once she broke through.

ALISON BEARD: So then, how did she expand her fan base, especially when she was entering the really crowded pop music scene, without alienating what we would call her core customer? How did she go big while also maintaining that intimate connection?

KEVIN EVERS: Classic adjacency strategy. She made sure, and her team made sure, not to alienate country music. So after her first album, after that first breakout in country music, they still maintained a country first attitude. All of her singles went to country radio first, and then they released new versions to pop radio stations. So, they really made sure that those relationships were fostered and cultivated in country music, while at the same time expanding into pop music. So, she was able to expand her audience into the pop market while not alienating country music at the same time. That’s a strategy that she used the first three, three and a half albums of her career, and it worked really well for her.

What’s unique about Swift is she was able to transition out of Teen-Dome. That’s something that a lot of artists struggle to do, right? But because she’s been able to transition out of that, it feels like her fans are growing up alongside with her. So, that core fan base has always remained. And then, of course, she’s evolved her sound over time at the same time. She moved to pop music. She’s recently moved to more of an indie rock sound, and that has brought in new consumers, new fans.

ALISON BEARD: There’s an authenticity, I think. She evolves, but it’s always authentically and reflecting who she is at the moment. And so, it’s almost as if that’s what people identify with. And I feel like you can see the same things in corporate America. The brands that always stick to their purpose or values are the ones that consumers really feel loyal to because they know what they’re getting.

So, this capacity for innovation and reinvention is pretty astonishing, even though she’s, at her core, a songwriter, always authentic, et cetera, she has made some colossal changes in terms of her image, in terms of her music. And you say that’s a result of productive paranoia. So, how did she avoid complacency that many people would feel being as successful as she was early on, and then, again, pick the right collaborators to ensure that she was changing just enough?

KEVIN EVERS: Productive paranoia, it’s a great term. And it fits Taylor to a T. She has voiced many times in her career that she was worried that her popularity would dwindle. This is something that most artists, especially musical artists, worry about.

ALISON BEARD: And businesses, right?

KEVIN EVERS: And businesses, of course. Look at the startup market, MySpace in 2006 was the biggest social media platform. And now, it’s Facebook and TikTok, and MySpace doesn’t exist anymore-

ALISON BEARD: Right.

KEVIN EVERS: Yeah. So, she’s always had this fear that her popularity may dwindle. This is something that Elvis also stated. He said, “I’m worried that the light will go out just as quickly as it went on.” And Swift has also voiced that one of her biggest fears is that her songs will sound the same, that her audience will feel, you’re not growing.

And this has really pushed her to make bold decisions at times when you wouldn’t think that she really had to make such bold decisions. She made this huge transition to pop music in 2014. She left country music completely behind. She had three straight number one albums at that time.

Her strategy of going after country music and pop was a great strategy. It was working really well for her, but she decided, because she’s a personal brand and she’s a songwriter, that her music was evolving, her personal tastes were evolving, and she thought it’d be much better for her and her fans if she chased what she was really passionate about. And in that case, it was pure pop music. That was risky, but again, it ended up really working out for her because she had multiple number one hits. And that album, 1989, is one of the best-selling albums of the 2010 decade.

ALISON BEARD: So, the advice for business leaders then is to be paranoid, to always be questioning your market position and figuring out ways to pivot and capture new markets or move in a new direction so that you don’t stay complacent?

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, and be paranoid when things are going well. I think that’s the key point here. And there’s been research on this, Morton Hansen has done research on this. He looked at leaders across all different industries, and he found that the leaders who were productively paranoid, who were really trying to assess risk even when things were going really well, perform much better when things actually weren’t going well because they were prepared to pivot and change when things changed.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned MySpace before and it is really amazing to think that Taylor started her career before the rise of all the social media platforms, before streaming. And she’s now really thriving in this digital era. So, what were the key skills or strategies that she used to make sure that she’s always ahead of the game when it comes to these new technologies?

KEVIN EVERS: If you look at the Eras Tour and how successful it was, it was successful because Swift had radically adapted her strategies to account for the changing behaviors of listeners in the streaming age. If you go back to 2019, Swift had arguably plateaued. She wasn’t growing as quickly as she had earlier in her career, so she made big changes. She used to have a very precious release strategy. It’s a very classic traditional strategy. Every two years, she’d release a new album. It would come out with great fanfare, she’d make a big deal out of it, mass media push, she’d go on tour, she’d stop and then do it again.

But around 2020 or so, she’d turned very prolific. In the last five years, she has released four studio albums and she has released four re-recordings. She has two more re-recordings to go. And rumors are she’ll release a new studio album soon as well. That’s a huge shift for her, that is so much content. And it’s a strategy that Marvel has used, and Star Wars has used, and other companies that have great IP.

It’s really hard to engage consumers and fans and listeners at this stage because of streaming and the attention economy. But once you have their attention, it’s important to continually engage them. And that’s what Swift has done. And I don’t think the Eras Tour would’ve received so much demand if she didn’t change her strategy to adjust to streaming and our changing behaviors in the attention economy.

ALISON BEARD: Now, she has been criticized for insinuating that a lot of these moves are intuitive, whereas people think, “No, this is totally calculated. And you’re more a business woman than you are a musician.” What do you make of that?

KEVIN EVERS: I think her decisions are very intuitive, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that’s a good thing. She has a real innate sense of what her fans want and what she should be doing. She received an Innovator of the Year award by iHeartRadio a few years ago. And she said, “I don’t wake up every day saying, ‘I’m going to innovate today.'” She really looks at the environment and she does what’s best for her, and I think that’s a big reason for her success. She’s not a copycat. She really has an innate sense of what she should be doing.

And we saw this with her re-record project, right? That’s another decision that seemed kind of crazy on paper. She decided to re-record all of her old music. Not re-release it, re-record it. And she was essentially telling her fans, “Don’t listen to the old stuff, listen to the new recordings.”

ALISON BEARD: And that was because her initial manager, Scott Borchetta, had owned the rights to the masters. He then sold it to Scooter Braun, a producer who Taylor didn’t like or respect or trust. And so, she said, “I don’t want this guy to own my music.”

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, exactly. It was a classic battle between people who own stuff and people who make stuff. And people who make stuff usually lose those battles because they don’t have a lot of leverage. And Swift didn’t have much leverage either, but the only leverage she had was the fan community that she had built for so long. I think she knew innately that whatever decision that she made, that her fans would rally behind her. And that’s exactly what they’ve done, because those four re-recordings that she’s released have been number one hits on the Billboard 200.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned that she is a woman in a male-dominated industry. How do you think that that’s changed the way both she’s perceived and then also the way she has operated and navigated in that environment?

KEVIN EVERS: It’s had a big impact on how she’s perceived. Taylor’s career follows a modified version of Newton’s third law. For every positive reaction, there’s an equal or greater negative reaction. And we saw this from the very early days of her career. Now, traditionally, artists who have predominantly female fan bases aren’t taken that seriously. Can even go back to The Beatles. Now, The Beatles are, obviously, a sensation. But that term, Beatle Mania – there’s this idea that female fans are more driven by emotion and they’re not driven by logic.

And this has affected Taylor in her career. She’s gone through many controversies, especially earlier on in her career. We can go back to 2009 when Kanye West rushed the stage at the VMAs and took her microphone and said, “I’m going to let you finish, but Beyonce had the greatest video of all time.” And what he was saying is, “You don’t deserve to be here. You’re not talented enough.” And Swift was heavily criticized throughout her career for this. That her voice wasn’t good enough, that she had a princess fixation, that her lyrics were twee.

But I think what’s really important about Taylor is that she has turned these moments into opportunities for empowerment for her and her fans. That even when she’s faced these controversies and these harsh criticisms, she’s doubled and tripled down on what she does best. And she did this after the Kanye controversy with her third album. She said, “If you’re going to criticize me, I’m going to write this album all by myself. I’m not going to use co-writers.” And then, she used that as a big selling point for the album. That was a big part of the promotional campaign. And she finds ways to improve and grow based on those criticisms, but also grow closer to her fans in the process.

ALISON BEARD: There’s also been a lot of reporting on the kind of leadership that she showed during the course of the Eras Tour. It was a massive operation. She wasn’t, obviously, managing the day-to-day logistics of it, but she did oversee the team for two years. So, what most interested you about the way that she managed that?

KEVIN EVERS: She’s very humble. I’ve never met her in person, I’ve never talked to her, but-

ALISON BEARD: Soon, hopefully. Soon.

KEVIN EVERS: Maybe. Who knows? My daughter would be delighted. Yeah. She’s very humble. Again, she’s been doing this for 20 years. If she wasn’t humble, or if there’s something off about her personality, or if her persona or the way that she presents herself to the world was manipulative or a fraud, we would know by now. And even though she’s very headstrong and she makes bold decisions, she’s humble. I think she understands that she’s not self-made, that she’s created by her fans. And she’s always had this innate sense that the people around her are just as important as she is.

And we saw this when she gave bonuses to her truck drivers and her crew. Big bonuses, over $100,000 to her truck drivers. And you can see it in the Eras Tour. You can see that she’s in control of every aspect of that production. And I think fans can sense that, right? I went twice to the Eras Tour with my daughter, and it was very clear that every detail was well-thought-out. It seemed like a very personal experience, even though we were watching a show with 70,000 other people.

ALISON BEARD: It’s interesting you think about the other musical acts that have been as commercially successful as Taylor Swift, The Beatles, Michael Jackson. The stories around them weren’t necessarily that they were savvy business people, it’s that they had good teams around them who knew how to make the best of their music and their talent. But with Taylor, it really does seem that she is the one in charge. So, did your research confirm that, that it’s really her driving the show?

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, for sure. You could see it when she was 14, 15 years old. You could see it at every… Every moment of her career, you can tell that she’s the CEO of her own career. She has a great team around here. She runs her business like a small family business. Her parents are involved, her brother is involved, and many of the members on her team have been there since the very beginning. So yes, she is the CEO of her own career, and much of the decisions are driven by Taylor herself. But she also has a great team that she’s been extremely loyal to over the last two decades.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And she trusts all of them too.

KEVIN EVERS: For sure. Yeah. Without a doubt.

ALISON BEARD: Just to wrap up, we’ve covered the business lessons for managers and executives, but I’m also really interested to hear what you think that each of us working in our day-to-day jobs can learn from Taylor. How can we make better career decisions based on what she’s done? When Macy gets her first job, what’s one way that you think she can bring a Taylor Swift sensibility to whatever workplace she chooses?

KEVIN EVERS: What I would tell my daughter is, based on my own research on Taylor Swift, is keep creating stuff. Whatever you do, don’t stop. There’s so many times in our careers where we stall, we struggle. And Taylor Swift has gone through all of that. She’s gone through many challenges and many controversies. But the reason why she is as popular and successful as she’s today is because she’s never stopped making music. She’s never stopped. Every two years she’s released a new album. Didn’t matter what was going on in her life or what was going on in her career at the time.

And of course, over the last five years, that output has accelerated. And I think that’s really important. I just wrote a book and I want to take a nap. But it’s important that I keep going, I keep promoting, and maybe I’ll write another book. And I think that’s important for all of us to know. We all hit plateaus in our career. We all struggle, but it’s important to push as hard as we can every day.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Keep finding the thing that lights your fire, I guess, and pursue it. Keep going.

KEVIN EVERS: And don’t get complacent.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

KEVIN EVERS: That’s something that Taylor Swift has never been, and that’s complacent. She’s always trying to adapt and grow.

ALISON BEARD: Kevin, thank you so much. It’s been terrific talking to you about this.

KEVIN EVERS: Thank you. This was fun.

ALISON BEARD: That’s Kevin Evers, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, and author of the book, There’s Nothing Like This, The Strategic Genius Of Taylor Swift. And we now have more than 1000 IdeaCast episodes, plus many more HBR podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts, or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager, Ian Fox, and senior production specialist, Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.