Kevin Evers: Taylor Swift’s Masterclass in Brand, Loyalty & Strategy

Taylor Swift. What's really interesting about her is her star persona, but her business savvy is up there too. And that's pretty unique for a pop superstar. She was turning those challenges into opportunities. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And today's a really interesting conversation about Taylor Swift, which I never really thought I'd be talking about on my podcast, but there's a real good reason we are. Kevin Evers is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and author of the upcoming book, There's Nothing Like This, The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.

And when this hit my inbox, I was first like, okay, but look, I've learned to really respect Taylor Swift from a business standpoint over the years. I mean, I always thought she was a pretty cool, authentic, I liked some of her poppy songs. And I was really glad that my daughter was idolizing somebody who I thought had strong values, at least seemingly. And, uh, but when I really started paying attention is when she took her, uh, originals back from that guy, Scooter or whatever, who owned all her masters. And instead of, you know, going through the negotiations process and getting forced to in that whole thing that she was caught up in, she said, nah, I'm going to, I'm going to take them back and rerecord them and went through that.

And when I saw that, that was one of the most boss moves I've ever seen. I started paying a lot more attention to her from a business standpoint and how she scales the unscalable with her fans and, you know, shows up at weddings and writes handwritten notes. And, and you see celebrities who raise to a certain point where they stop engaging with their fans or doing those types of things because it isn't scalable. And she does and her authenticity vision and adaptability are all extremely relevant to what I think we should be paying attention to today. So I think you're going to enjoy this conversation because we peel back the layers quite a bit on her career, on some of the inflection points and what she did.

And there are so many learning lessons to, from her career and how she's evolved that I think we can apply to us in sales and business and entrepreneurship. So hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Kevin Evers, welcome to make it happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Hey, John, how's it going? I'm doing really well. It's great to be here. It's good, man. This is going to be an interesting conversation. When this one came across my email inbox, I was like, Ooh, Taylor Swift, you wrote it. You ended up writing this book on Taylor Swift, which I found very, very interesting. And, you know, I have grown to really respect her over the years, right?

At first I thought pop star. And then as I followed her from a, from a business standpoint, I've gained an insane respect for her and also having a daughter, right? My 14 year old daughter, she's kind of fallen off a little bit of Taylor. Um, but if there was anybody that I would want my young daughter to idolize in today's world of all the crap that's out there, it's Taylor. So let's start with this. I mean, you're, well, give a little background on you. You've been a Harvard Business Review for pretty much your entire career, right? For sure. Yep. Close to 15 years now. Give us a little context there. Yeah. So I am a book editor at Harvard Business Review. I've been doing that for the last 15 years.

So what that means is I'm acquiring, I'm an acquiring editor. Some people call it a commissioning editor. I scout for ideas, I scout for authors. And then once I sign those books up, I help those authors develop their ideas and to ultimately shape their ideas for maximal market impact. What made you get into that, by the way, what was the driver? Was that something you always interested in like when, as a kid, or did you just find that as, as a passion later on? I came in the back door. I actually thought I would become a filmmaker or a professor of film, made a bad life decision, went to grad school for film studies, but then ended up at HBR. I always love writing. I always love collaborating in the creative process.

So that's definitely filled my itch so far. All right. I like it. Like it. And what's, uh, let's start with what made you choose Taylor Swift. I mean, I mean, I'm assuming she wasn't exactly on your, you know, top 10 list of, you know, artists to listen to, you know, go on your way into work or anything like that. So what, what all of a sudden piqued your interest about her? You know, my progression was very similar to yours. When Taylor Swift rose up in country music in 2006, I was in grad school. I was listening to Radiohead. I was that annoying guy who was, you know, at, at dinner parties and at parties, I was given hot takes about European art film. The Taylor Swift was, was not on my radar, but over time I became a casual fan.

And what's really interesting about her is her star persona, the things that she projects to her audience and the things that her fans love about her. Of course, it's her personal songwriting, but her business savvy is up there too. And that's pretty unique for a pop superstar for fans to call out their business savvy. You know, the Beatles were business savvy. Grateful dad were business savvy, but I'm not so sure their fans would pick their business savvy as one of the top three things they say about them. And her, the scale of her popularity and success right now is pretty remarkable. She's been doing this for two decades now. And the music industry is a fickle, brutish industry, especially over the last 20 years.

She's gone through a lot of shifts, a lot of disruptions. And the more and more I looked into her, the more and more I realized that she had great entrepreneurial instincts. She was turning those challenges into opportunities. Yeah. And I think, you know, if I were to, what would, I mean, the three words that I would sum up as it relates to her after reading through a lot of this stuff and just paying attention is I wrote them down like vision, adaptability, and authenticity. Would you say that those, like what other, like, would you use those words or other words to describe kind of her career and who she is? Those are good words. Yeah. The fourth one I would add is customer obsessed. I think that's in her, in her situation, it's fan obsessed, but she understands that superstars aren't self-made.

She's in a culture market. So there's a lot of luck. There's a lot of randomness and there's a lot of social influence involved. And she understands better than most that it's her fans that have created her. And she goes above and beyond to satisfy her fans and to delight her fans. The heiress tour, chief example of this. She could have played a greatest hit show to two and a half hours. She'd never done that before. I think her fans would have walked away and they would have been happy. They would have been satisfied. They would have been joyous. But instead she plays three and a half hours. She plays a set list that moved beyond 40 songs. She devoted a mini set to every album of her career, except her debut.

And she didn't have to do that. And that had to come at great mental and physical cost to her, to her crew, to her band, to her dancers. But this is what she does. She sets high expectations and then she exceeds those expectations. I think that's a big reason why her fans stick around for so long. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB Sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process.

Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, If you go to JBarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. Yeah. I mean, I think that her evolution has been pretty impressive and to your point, like not just relying on the hits because I mean, quite frankly, you said it earlier, like the music industry. It's almost like when you go to see Billy Joel or somebody like that, it's like you want to hear Billy Joel's classics. Right. And, and you know, you tolerate some of the new stuff because you're like, all right, cool.

Yeah. But can please play piano, man, you know, play the old stuff. We want to hear the hits. Yeah. Right. But her fans and what she keeps doing, it seems like her fans keep, I don't want to say tolerating, but, but being excited about the new stuff and wanting the new stuff. And it's really interesting to me to watch that growth and how she is not lost. I mean, yes. Okay. Like I said earlier, my daughter's maybe fallen off a little bit of her stuff. But it seems like she's growing with her fans while acquiring new ones. And so they're evolving with her. And do you think that's because of her, you know, her unique ability from a storytelling standpoint? Because she, she is seemingly, it's almost, I'd be scared to death to date her, by the way, because you almost guaranteed to be on a song one way or the other.

But do you think it's because she is so vulnerable when it comes to how she tells these stories and how she connects with her fans in addition to the obsession with them and making sure that they feel part of this? I think so. I think so. And I think it goes back to her early career. When she was 13, 14 years old, she had such a clear vision of what she wanted to do. I was going to ask about that. She wanted to write her own songs. She wanted to write a song. She wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers, which were teenage girls. And she wanted to put out an album as soon as possible. Now, not everyone around her, executives at music labels, agreed with that. But she persisted.

And in hindsight, we know that that worked out for her. But she always has grown up with her fans. It's almost as if every album is a check-in with her fans. Like, here's what's going on in my life. Here's the experiences I've gone through. Let me sing about those experiences in a really intimate, vulnerable way. And her fans respond in kind. She's really been able to evolve throughout her career. And although she's reinvented her sound, she's never really pulled away from that intimacy, that vulnerability. And she never tries to push her age or, you know, create albums that don't really speak to what she's going through at the moment. And that's a big reason why her fans stick around, because they're growing up with Taylor Swift.

I think that's why the Era's tour was so emotional for people, too, because it was 20 years in the making. And it was a retrospective of Swift's career, but it also allowed fans to relive their own experiences when they listened to those old songs. I think that's why it was so potent for people. Gary Vaynerchuk says something about her, about this, about, you know, the customer obsession. And she scales the unscalable, right? She does the exact opposite of what people do. She stops by a wedding of a fan and pops in to take pictures. She writes handwritten notes to her fans, you know, and you would think somebody of her stature, somebody of, you know, must get millions and millions and millions of requests and things.

And she still takes the time to do that. It's counterintuitive. I mean, I understand it in the sense that, like, I would love to do that for every single person and respond to every single email. It's just not feasible. So how does she balance that? Is it selective? Is it genuine? Is it just, or is there a strategy to how she scales the unscalable here? I think it's really genuine. I don't know if you can go to the lengths that she does to be fan obsessed. If it's not genuine, I think she really enjoys doing it. But she talked about this very early in her career. She had a seminal moment with Leanne Rimes. Swift was 10 or 11 at the time, maybe 12. And she saw Leanne Rimes at a concert. And she sent Leanne Rimes a letter before the show to her hotel.

And after the show, Leanne Rimes went up to her and said, oh, hi, Taylor. New Taylor's name. Talked to her. Had a very personal conversation with her. And Taylor Swift has said that had such a profound impact on her that she really felt that once she became a popular artist, that she had to do something similar. And Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, he's talked about why a lot of startup founders fail. And one of the reasons, he says, is they're obsessed with their product, but they're not obsessed enough with their customer. And for tech startups, this makes sense. Most of the founders are their coders, their engineers. And Swift is really good at her product. She's an exceptional songwriter, but she's as equally obsessed about pleasing her fans.

And she does it on a one-to-one basis. She's even invited fans over to her home for listening parties. And she was the most famous person in the world at this point. This is 2014. And I don't even answer the doorbell. I don't know about you. So, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, she really goes above and beyond. And I think she just genuinely, genuinely likes to do it. Yeah. And you always wonder, cause I, you know, I talk a little bit about if you get famous, right? I'd rather be rich than famous. Cause I don't, I don't really want the exposure of those types of things. But if you do become famous and you see those artists or those athletes who don't, don't sign autographs, who don't, you know, I don't fundamentally understand that.

Cause it doesn't seem like they get it, that the only reason, again, it goes back to the Y Combinator thing. It's like, oh, my product's the best. Oh, well, my talent's the best. So that's why I'm here. It's like, no asshole. The reason that you're getting paid $20 million a year is cause people like us show up and pay that money that we work our asses for to watch you play. And yes, you are talented, no question, but I've seen star after star after star kind of rise to a certain level with their talent, but then get capped because they're jackasses. For sure. And what do you think that, do you think it's that, that, um, cause, cause Taylor's a good example for me of, of success in my belief, the right way and being a good person, even though I don't know her, she seems like she's just a good person.

And it kind of jumps over a lot of the assholes who, who get to the super high level of success. Cause you see people got to cut corners and screw people over and step all over people to get to the upper echelon of success, but she is compound, you know, way above the, not the majority of those. So let's talk about that. What you said earlier about her vision, how and why do you think she had such a clear vision or what was she exposed to at such a young age to, to have the clarity of what she wanted to do? Cause I think so many people are lacking that and it takes so long for some of us to even recognize it. And most of us don't quite frankly, I'm jealous of it. Cause I'm still trying to figure out mine.

You know what I mean? Even college. I was like, I don't know what I want to do when I got into the real world. I don't know what I want to do. And I keep evolving, but she was crystal clear on it. So were there influences outside of Leanne Rimes? Um, I'm sorry. Yeah. Leanne Rimes, Leanne Rimes, um, that, that shaped that vision for her, or was she just that unique at that age? This is the thing that surprised me the most was how clear her vision was at 13, 14 years old. Cause I agree with you. I mean, I still don't know what I want to do with my life. You know, it's, it's, and she was so crystal clear about it. And she made some bold decisions because she was so crystal clear about it. Decisions that I don't think I would have made, especially at that age, because she was very clear.

I want to write my own songs, which wasn't very common. Nashville is very much driven by the professional, their professional songwriting network. And she wanted to write songs for her audience, which is teenage, teenage girls. And the, there was executives that said, yeah, you know what? I don't think there's an audience for teenage girls. We tried that and that, and it didn't really work, but she persisted. And she had a development deal with RCA records, one of the biggest labels on music row at the time. And she left the development deal because they didn't really believe in her vision. And then not only that, she signed up with a executive, Scott Braschetta, who was working at Universal Label Group at the time, but then he was leaving to start his own label.

He didn't have funding. He didn't have headquarters. He didn't even have a name for his startup, but she went with him because he said, I want you to write your own songs. I'm never going to tell you to write someone else's songs. And I want to put out an album as soon as possible. I don't think we'd be sitting here today talking about Taylor Swift that she didn't have such a clear vision. And there's so many people around her, executives who deal with artists all the time, who were shocked by how clear she was and how persistent she was in what she wanted. And again, do you think that was just an eight or was it through your interviews and everything else? Was it her parents where they kind of gave her or helped foster that?

Or was, like I said, was she just that unique of an individual at that young age? I think her parents definitely helped. Her dad worked at financial services. Her mom worked in marketing. And so they had a great business sense. But I also think a lot of this was really innate and instinctual for Swift. And so much of her strategy seemed like she just has a knack for understanding the market, understanding what she needs to do to delight her fans. And I think this is this is the case here, too. I don't think she was reading Blue Ocean Strategy or dipping into Harvard Business Review to find new ways to seize opportunities that other people ignored. But she was also really close to her audience at the time.

Right. As people were telling her, no, there's not really an audience for teen girls. Taylor Swift was surrounded by teen girls all the time who liked her music. So she did have that that closeness to the audience that executives in Nashville didn't have. And was that from a Blue Ocean standpoint? Was that the Blue Ocean was the teen, the teenage girl market that nobody was really touching or kept trying, but really not resonating? So she kind of looked at that with and just for those of most of my audience should know Blue Ocean. But, you know, fundamentally, everybody's in the Red Ocean doing the same thing and whatever. And Blue Ocean is there's there's opportunity over there that nobody's seeing.

So I'm going to jump into that and I get much more successful. So with that as context, was that it? Was it the teen girl that nobody was touching? Yeah, it was definitely the teen girl audience in country music, which there are a few artists that had tried it before in labels, but it didn't quite work out. And so the major labels were completely ignoring that audience. It's very similar to what Marvel did in the 1960s. So Marvel at the time was in cutthroat competition with DC Comics, but DC Comics was well above Marvel. Marvel was a pretty small outlet at the time. And then under Stan Lee's tutelage and some other collaborators, they decided to go after young college students, which DC wasn't going after.

And then they made their superheroes more human and relatable. And then Marvel took off after that. I mean, their growth was exponential after doing that. And Swift did something very similar. How can we relate that from a sales standpoint, right? Because I always try, especially right now in the world with what we're living in with AI and all the confusion out there, it's almost seemingly it's really hard to spot blue ocean opportunities. But if we kind of bring it down from a tactical level about getting creative with where you're finding your opportunities from a sales standpoint or who you're working for, what you're selling, you know, how do you think we can apply some of that? Because her, because her was like teenage girls and teenage girls, right?

That makes a lot of sense to me. It's like, okay, you look like me. I can relate to you. But a lot of sales reps are all falling into the same path of, okay, I got to do this and I got to do what my boss tells me and whatever. And they're all trying to get mediocre results. The ones who I see rise to the top are the ones that are figuring out different ways. So what aspects of her strategy, thought process that you've been able to unpack, can we apply towards our own thought process to look for blue ocean opportunities and find that niche? Yeah. I think it's to pay attention to your own experiences. This is what happened with Scott Perchetta, the head of her label. He had, when he was at Universal Label Group, he was working with a teen artist named Jessica Andrews and she didn't quite pan out.

But they were doing grassroots promotion with her. They were going to high schools. They were having her play in high school gyms. And he could feel the energy. He could really feel it. But as he said, her vision didn't really allow her to succeed and scale in country music at the time. She wasn't quite clear on the artist she wanted to be. And so personally, he had that experience. He saw it firsthand. While others in the music industry were looking at the data. And the data did show that there probably wasn't an audience. At the time, this is 2004, 80% of the hits on country radio were performed by men. And men were played four to five times more than women. He had that firsthand experience.

But I also think what helped Scott Perchetta is he had a lot of skin in the game. It's hard enough when you work in a corporation, if you're working at a major label, to convince your bosses that, oh, you know, actually there is an audience for teen girls. And let's bet on this 14 or 15 year old, you're probably going to get laughed out of the room. But since he had his own startup and he had to secure his own funding, he was willing to take a big bet on Swift and he believed in her. So for me, it's really trying to put your nose to the ground and really trust your experiences, but then having the courage and the strength to push through those ideas. So a lot of this comes down also vision and values, because it sounds like she left because, you know, she went with that guy because she shared his values of, look, or he shared her values of, look, I want you to be authentic.

I want to talk about what you've seen with her evolution of, of, of have her values changed in any way, shape or form of the, or have they stayed rock solid? And the same thing with her vision, you know, as I, as in that initial, like, okay, this is my vision. I want to write my own stuff. And obviously she's done that. So have you, has she been open about values and vision and how they've adjusted along the way? I think she has so much longevity in the industry because she stayed true to those values, even as her sound has shifted. She understands her fans job to be done. Her fans aren't hiring her to, you know, write great songs. I mean, that's a big part of it. But I think the reason why her fans are so connected to her is because she validates their experiences.

She validates their emotions and she creates very personal experiences around her music. Like her fans really feel like they have a deep personal relationship with her. And you can look at, it doesn't matter if she moved to pop music. It doesn't matter if she moved to electro pop. It doesn't matter if she was going into indie music. That has always remained a constant in her career. I think a big part of that too is she has full control over her career. She's, she's the chief songwriter for all of her songs. So she doesn't have to, she doesn't have to rely on collaborators so much to, to bring her songs. But I think that really enables her to stay true to her core. I think her audience appreciates that.

So even if she changes and her sound changes, she's still the same tailor. It's funny from a business standpoint, right? You know, I've never taken funding. And I've gone through some acquisitions and it's, to me, there's a reason I'm still on my own, do my own thing. And probably haven't cracked to be a multi, multi-millionaire type of scenarios because every time I get close to that acquisition, every time I get close to, you know, the funding from somebody else, that the value alignment, even though it says it's there up front, nine times out of 10, it's not. They just say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we're there. And, and to really get, you know, align with somebody's values, you get to, you need to know them and, and you need to limit the external factors.

And I, and I think that's, what's so beautiful about her ability to kind of own her own narrative and, and not be dictated by people telling her what to do. Um, you know, she runs her business like a, like a family business. Her parents are actively involved. Her brother's involved. It's, it's a, it's a small team. And a lot of the people who are working for her have worked for her since 2006. I love that. And one of the things going back to owning her own stuff that this, what is it? Um, was it scooter? Yeah. Scooter Braun, uh, who had her, who had her originals. I, that this, I think was the pivotal moment for me when I went from being, oh, she's a good person in a, you know, she's poppy music.

I'm not sure I love it, but she's a good person. She's a good kid. I'm glad my daughter loves her. And then when she took her, her masters back and rerecorded every single one of them, I was like, that was one of those boss moves. I think I've ever, ever seen in business and forget about music and business. Help me understand a little bit about that. Cause there's a, there's a few stories there that, you know, rumorville of it was contrived a little bit. So it kind of could show her that she did her values and scooter tried to kind of work with her on those things. Could you unpack that a little bit for me? Cause I want to make sure that I'm not, uh, I haven't tainted the, the, the reality of what that was.

Cause it seemed from the outside, like, holy shit, that was incredible. But then there's a little bit of underpinning. So what did you see in that transition for her that, and what are some of the learning lessons that we can take from a sales and business standpoint? Yeah, it's a great story. So Scott Bruchetta, again, who is the head of her former label, he owned Taylor Swift's master recordings and he wanted to sell his business. Taylor Swift had left for universal label group after her first six albums. So she's no longer with big machine. And Scott Bruchetta was well within his right to sell his company. He took on a lot of risk. He had a lot of skin in the game. And like any entrepreneur startup founder, he was well within his right to sell his business.

It just so happened that Taylor Swift's masters were included in that business and were a pretty valuable asset in that sale. And can I pause, can I pause for two seconds as you, why it, with her knowing that she wanted to own, you know, have her own narrative and all these different things. How did she allow him to own the originals? Is that just part of what music industry does these days? Or was that a part of the negotiations? Very common in the music industry. So the contract that she signed in 2005 gave the master recordings to Scott Bruchetta, which from, from a major record label standpoint, it makes sense because they're making most of their money off their backlist, their back catalog.

And they're the ones who put all the money up front. They had a lot of risks. So it makes sense why they would want to keep the master recordings. But I also understand an artist perspective. Like this is my life's work. And so after a certain amount of time, maybe I should get those back and I should have full control over those, which was Swift's argument too. And I think she had a rightful claim to those because she wasn't just a normal artist. She had built her brand on these deep personal connections with her fans. And that really grew her popularity. So her success, yes, was based on her music, but it was so much more than that. So I can understand why she was upset when her masters were sold, because as she said, those are the songs that she wrote in her bedroom.

And she had a, she had a big role in scaling her success and popularity because of her fan obsession. So I completely understand why she felt like, you know, she had, she had a right to those masters. And also it's tough because those masters were sold to Scooter Braun, a venture capital firm. And that means that they could do whatever they really want with them. And Taylor had, didn't really have that much control over what they could do. Now she was a songwriter on those albums, so she could, you know, deny licensing deals and other things. But still, I think she wanted full control over those. And it's something that Prince wanted too. Prince had a famous battle with Warner Brothers in the 1990s over this.

He wanted control for his master recordings and that didn't really work out for him. And he threatened to rerecord his albums as well, but he never followed through. So she, so with that transition, right, from a, you know, when was that? I think she kind of, I remember seeing a little bit back and forth in the news about her going and trying to get him. And then she just said, fuck it, I'm just going to do this myself. And she just pulled them all back. What was that like? That, again, that decision must not have been easy because the amount of effort and work she had to put into rerecording all of it. But it was a pretty public and boss move. So how did that come about? Yeah, so there is, there has since been documents that have leaked that show that Taylor Swift and her team were working with Scooter Braun, talking to Scooter Braun to buy those masters back.

And he ended up selling them to someone else. But during the negotiation, Swift used emotion to great effect. She threatened to rerecord the albums and a lot of people thought it was a bluff, right? And it wasn't a bluff. After those masters were sold to Shamrock, which is a, I believe, a subsidiary of Disney. It's another private investment firm. And they wrote a letter to Taylor and they said, hey, you know, we'd love to have you actively involved in this. I believe they may have offered her equity. And she wrote back and said, nope, I'm going forward. I'm rerecording my old music, which was a boss move. Because as you mentioned, the reason why artists haven't done this before is I don't think fans.

Like, what fans do you think would really jump on the bandwagon for this type of thing? Because she's creating near facsimiles of her older albums. It's a more mature Taylor singing her older music. But it's also music that her fans had grown up listening to. And you change the voice, that could have a big impact on how fans receive that music. But she followed through and her storytelling around those rerecords and why she did that and how she expressed that in very emotional and personal terms, I think is a big reason why her fans followed through, bought those albums, really loved those albums. And at the same time, it's a boss move because she's essentially telling her fans, don't listen to my old music.

And even though those albums and those songs still do well with streaming, she's definitely cut into the value of that music. So whoever owns that music right now aren't reaping as many rewards as they could have if she didn't rerecord her older music. How did she weave the story into the rerecording, right? So let's talk from a social standpoint, right, and what she was putting out there. You know, I always tell people from a personal, well, from a sales and business standpoint, that people are way more interested in the journey than they are the destination, right? So tell your story because it's the easiest and most authentic way for you to create content. You explain what you're learning or what you're doing, not necessarily what you know.

So for her, with all the different social channels, interviews, whatever, was there a medium that she was using to tell this story to her audience that was specific? Or was it omnipresent in the sense that almost no matter where she went and while she was talking through this, she was telling the narrative? With Taylor Swift, all she needs to do is light a match and her fans take care of the rest. So the day that it was reported that Scott Pruschetta had sold Big Machine and along with it her masters, she posted a scathing post on Tumblr about this. She did not mince words. It was very emotional and you could even argue it was unreasonable, but I think she used those to her advantage because she did not mince words.

It's like, this is terrible. I can't believe that he would do something like this. And her fans rallied behind that. And that's all she did in the beginning. She just posted the Tumblr and then she bailed. But that's all she really needed to do because her fans are so attuned to what she's saying. And then it just caught like wildfire on social media. Her fans were super engaged and couldn't stop talking about it. I mean, I think, again, that goes back to the dedication that her fans have and how she connects with her audience that is just, I think, second to none in so many ways. She's also using emotion in a way that we're told you're not supposed to, right? You're supposed to, oh, there's a bit, that's what a lot of people said.

Oh, there's a business transaction. She shouldn't be quiet. Yeah. And she was also criticized for using victim language and making herself a victim. But again, she was well within her right to be upset about this. It was her music. And yeah, I mean, it's, she's, she has a way of using emotion, using vulnerability with her fans and turning these controversies into sources of empowerment. How does she, what's her approach to the, the trolls, the negativity compared to all, because she obviously gets a ton of positive feedback from her fans, almost to a certain degree, psycho wise, in the sense like they're so avid about there. And, and it, and it, that's why it's almost a joke these days. Like you see late night talk show hosts be like, I'm not making fun of Taylor Swift, please.

I don't want this one to come after me. Right. Um, but there's also, there's gotta be a lot of vitriol, like just hatred coming her way. So is she of the approach when you, when it comes to social and those types of things of, Hey, let the haters hate, right. Um, you know, shake it off that type of thing. Or, you know, does she engage with, with the, uh, the trolls, if you will, the negativity to try to authentically, you know, shape them and, and pull them out of that and turn them into fans. What's her approach on that? Yeah, you're, you're right. She, her entire career, she follows her career, follows a modified version of Newton's third law for every positive reaction. There's an equal or greater negative reaction.

Yeah. And she's gone through a lot of controversies, a lot of backlash, a lot of criticism. And the biggest one was back in 2009 when Kanye at the VMAs walked up, stole the mic after she'd accepted the award for female video of the year. And he said, I'm gonna let you finish. But Beyonce had the greatest album of the greatest video of the year of all time. I think he said, and then poof, he was gone. And she was left there in front of thousands of people and millions of people at home. And it was embarrassing. And he was basically telling her, you're not talented enough in front of the world, basically. And she also received a lot of criticisms months after that, the Grammys. She won album of the year, most prestigious award there is in the music industry.

She had a so-so to bad performance with Stevie Nicks, and the internet came for her crown. They were savage about her lack of vocal talent, supposedly. I think what she does is, she doesn't interact with the trolls so much. She turns it into good music. It always comes back to her storytelling, right? And after the Kanye fiasco, which she said devastated her, she decided, hey, if people are going to criticize my talent, well, I'm not going to use any co-writers for this album, her third album. I'm going to do it all myself. And she made it a big part of the promotional campaign for that album. She didn't let her fans notice that. She said, hey, I'm writing this all by myself, right? If you don't think I'm talented, well, let's see.

And she didn't back down on her strengths. She was in her early 20s at the time, but she was being criticized for being too teenage, for being twee, for having a princess fixation. But she doubled down on those things, too. She decided to write a very vulnerable and intimate album about what it's like to transition from your teens and into your 20s. And she promoted the album that way. So her fans, again, it was a source of empowerment for her and her fans. Her fans were being criticized at the time, too. So she always finds a way to make it about the music, make it about the storytelling. And I think that's why her fans react so positively. Yeah, so it's almost like, is she motivated in some ways by, I don't want to say proving people wrong, but does that negative stuff seem to fuel her?

Because it tears so many people down and it gets people. I see so many people go in that negative realm. And to your point, what we were talking about is engage with the trolls, engage with them and try to fight them in some way, shape or form versus just, hey, you know what? If you tell me I'm suck or whatever it is, I'm just going to prove you wrong and keep going forward. So do you find that that negativity in a lot of ways fuels her or is it more just her her ethos of I'm just moving forward here and you can feel you can think what you want to think. I know I have good values and I know I, I care. So I'm just going to keep putting out what I think is the right thing to do. I think she's relentless, like a great athlete.

When I was editing this book, I was rewriting the book. My editor said, she reminds me of Tom Brady. She has that, she has that intense and relentless pursuit of excellence, but also doesn't seem to take shit from anyone. No, she has a quote very early on in the book that I found where she said, you know, when anyone tells me to do something, I can't do something. It just makes me want to do it more. Yeah. And I do feel like she takes that criticism and I think she, she's very motivated to prove her critics wrong. I love that. And it's, you know, the question of, you know, do you hate losing or do you love winning? You know, for, you know, that kind of tells you, okay, do you, is it, you feel by the negative or the positive?

And it seems like she's got a little bit of both on there for her because I think obviously she, she thrives on the energy that her positive audience gives her. But it sounds like she's driven more by what people say. Oh, and she'll remind people too, that they're wrong. She, with her album 1989, which is her big transition from country to pop music, I know a lot of people in the industry were like, eh, you know, I don't think she's going to hit a million copies. You know, she's leaving behind a big segment of her audience in country music. And of course she sells over a million copies and she made sure to let everyone know that on social media and some of her speeches and promotional campaign.

She, one thing I was curious about, you brought up here, could you talk about strategy of narrative reversal with a single blank space? I was kind of taking some notes here. So talk a little bit about the narrative, like reversing the narrative. Um, I think it kind of plays into the negativity here, but could you expand on that a little bit? For sure. So around 2016, Swift was coming off of a huge pop hit 1989. It was a big transformation for her and like she always does, she executed on it really well. And, you know, through most of her career, she was always criticized and people questioned her talent. But I think with 1989, she had reached a new peak and that's really when people started to notice that, oh, you know, she's a special artist and she's a special business person.

Well, as we know, you know, the higher you rise, the harder you fall. And this is Kanye West again. And Kanye West released a song called Famous, where he called Swift a bitch. And immediately Taylor came out and denounced the song and said, you know, this isn't right. And then Kim Kardashian, who was then Kanye West's husband or wife, released a video months later of Kanye talking to Taylor Swift. And Swift appeared to say, hey, yeah, sure, this song is great. Fine. But he never mentioned the word bitch on the phone call. So once the video came out, it seemed like Swift was caught in a trap where she had built her reputation on her authenticity and her relatability. But people had long thought that she was calculated and she was a manipulator, especially of, you know, in the public relations realm.

And it was like a politician who claims to have a lot of family values, but then gets caught cheating on his wife. Like, that's how people reacted to Taylor Swift in the moment, because it seemed like she was caught in a big lie. So people were calling her a snake. There's a big social media campaign. People were inundating her social posts with snakes. And she thought her career may be over. And a year later, she went silent. Then a year later, she put out a new album called Reputation. And she took all of that criticism and turned that into her own storytelling. She played with that concept that people were calling her in her music videos and in her songs. And so this is called narrative reversal.

And a lot of companies have done this before. You know, if you're told that you're online, if everyone's saying that your pizza sucks, well, maybe you do an ad where you talk about how people are talking about how your pizza sucks. Right. It's a it's a clever way to deal with the haters and to acknowledge what's being said about your brand, but do it in a fun and entertaining way. But then also reversing that narrative in some way. That's what Swift did with her Reputation album. She embraced that bad girl persona that people were were saying that she was. And I thought it was a really clever way to deal with that controversy. Right. Again, it all goes back to her music and that reversal of those controversial with some and controversial with some fans because it was such a big pivot for her.

I think ultimately it ended up giving her a lot of creative freedom and flexibility that she wouldn't have had. If she hadn't done that narrative reversal. So coming out of that album, she was really able to reinvent herself with each new album rather than trying to stick to the same formula. Yeah. And so it's like you own it, right? I mean, the more you fight the narrative that's out there against you, the more the narrative compounds and makes it based, you know, come to fruition. And if you just say, yeah, sure, you know, OK, appreciate that and use it. I think that's a lot. And we can bring that from sales and business and everything else. You know, I talk about sales reps. There's a perception of sales reps.

For sure. You know, sleazy, douchey, whatever. And if you kind of lean into that and say, hey, look, I get it. You know, there's there's definitely valid reasons that you shouldn't trust anything that comes out of my mouth right now. For sure. Let me explain you how and why I'm still in this profession, even though it's, you know, one that people a lot of people don't respect in a lot of ways or fear in a lot of ways. And I think if you you I call it the preemptive strike when it comes to objection handling, where you you're just like, you know, I know what you're thinking right now. So I'm going to use that first and take that power away and then create the narrative on my own. And what's interesting around that time, too, is Taylor Swift decided not to do any promotion for that album.

No way. Really? Yeah. She. Scrubbed her social media post and said, I'm just going to let the music speak for itself. Wow. That's that's bold. Yeah. That is extremely bold. Awesome. Well, what's what do you see is next for her? Because, you know. She just like she just keeps evolving, I think, with the times and attracting more and more and more and not losing a huge portion of her audience, but continuously. Gaining it. Where do you see her going with this? Is she going to keep exploring from a musical genre standpoint, move into different realms? Or is she going to get back to her roots? Like, have you got gained any insight into what her new vision is for where she wants to go? Yeah. After the Ares tour, if I were her, I would have been exhilarated.

But I also felt like the next challenge was extremely daunting because that tour wrapped up 20 years of her career as a culmination of 20 years. So it's like, where do you go from there? I mean, it shifted economies for crying out loud. For sure. Like, how can you get better? It was over $2 billion in revenue. It was the highest grossing tour of all time. Ridiculous. And the scale of her success and popularity right now is really extreme. So in 2024, Hits Daily Double reported that her sales and her streams represented nearly 2% of the total music market. Just her. And there's millions of artists and albums creating music these days. And that doesn't include her merchandising, and it doesn't include the Ares tour.

So if you included those numbers, it would have been a much higher number. So she is, she's not even a superstar. I don't even know what to call her. She's not a megastar. It's Beatles-esque at this point. So it's a great question. Where do we go from here? I think what's really unique about Taylor Swift right now is she's managed to simultaneously be a legacy act, but also a really relevant pop star at the same time. Most artists at this point are legacy acts, right? They depend on their older music. But she's managed to do that, too, with her re-records. But she's also releasing new music at a fast clip. And that's pretty rare to balance both of those things. So I think what's next for her, it wouldn't surprise me if she went big with her next studio album.

She just doesn't seem like the type of person that's going to settle. She's not the type of person that likes 3% growth each year. I mean, she's really trying to increase her popularity. So it wouldn't surprise me if she went really big with a big pop album. She's long rumored to be working on a rock album. I think she could do a really good job there. But what I'm most interested in is she has two re-records left. She has Reputation and she has her debut album. I think her debut is going to be big because that will be a celebration of her early rise in country music. But I also think she's going to be really savvy about it and make it a celebration of country music itself. So this will be her big return to country music.

That's what I was kind of wondering. I'm wondering if she's ever going to come back and it almost makes too much sense not to, or too much sense to do. She has to get back to those roots because then it's like full circle scenario, right? Because I understand the niche genre, if you will, if you would look at country and then pop as an overarching, like that's where you quote unquote sell out. But she has seemed to get into the pop world without much of the sellout factor while still keeping some of those roots. So it'd be great to see her go back to those roots. And I didn't realize she hadn't recorded that debut album yet. She hadn't re-recorded that one. So that's an ace in the hole right there.

There's no question. Yeah, so that should come out soon, hopefully. But I think that's going to be, she's going to find savvy ways to promote that. It wouldn't surprise me if she had some collaborations with some pretty heavy hitters in country music, whether it's Shania Twain or Faith Hill. She's smart. She'll figure it out, I'm sure. Yeah, we didn't even get into the collaboration and how she's collaborated with some of the most unique artists out there to broaden the audience as well, which is, that's always a great way to just, again, gain more credibility in a certain genre by working with some of the, you know, just absolute icons in certain areas that bring an audience that might not have been paying attention to her.

Yeah, she's very loyal to her collaborators. She has longtime collaborators. I mean, her first producer that she worked with, Nathan Chapman, he worked, she worked with her in full for the first three albums, and then some for her fourth and some for her fifth. And he had never produced an album before, but she loved the sound of her demos that he created. So she insisted that he work on her albums, even though people around her was like, no, you should work with this producer, this producer. And she tried. And then she finally got her way and she worked with Chapman. But she's, yeah, she's very loyal to her collaborators, but she does pick up new collaborators when she needs those positive shocks to shift her sound.

But then they're usually not one-offs. She usually works with them for multiple albums. I think this is a big way where she's able to keep that core audience, keep the core of what she does while evolving at the same time. Awesome, man. Well, the book's called There's Nothing Like This. And quite frankly, man, I agree with you. I used to say that, you know, my favorite artist of all time. All right. I think that I would have this argument a lot, which is I think the greatest entertainer of all time was Michael Jackson. For sure. If you watch the fandom and the insanity, no matter where he went in the world, and this was way before social media. So I don't, Michael Jackson wasn't the best singer of all time by any stretch of the imagination, but I think he was one of the best entertainers, or if not the best entertainer of all time.

I'm starting to look at, you know, Taylor Swift saying, again, I don't think she's the best singer of all time. I mean, her vocals are good. You know, her songwriting is unique because it's her story. But I think from an entertainer and a connection with the audience standpoint, it's going to be hard to top her by the end of her career at this point. This is going to be sacrilegious to some, but I would put her in a category that includes the Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Madonna. I'm sure we could argue there's some others that belong in that group. But I think what's really fascinating about her, though, is the industry that she's operating in is much different than the one that Michael Jackson, Madonna did.

This is one of the toughest periods in music industry history. There's been so much disruption between the, from Napster to digital to streaming and the rise of social media. And Swift has found a way to do it her own way. And for that reason, I don't think there'll be another Taylor Swift. Yeah, it's tough to, it's kind of like, and I love the analogy of Tom Brady, by the way, obviously, as a New England Patriots fan. I think, I'll argue that there's never really going to be another Tom Brady, right? Patrick Mahomes might get close with a few more championships, that type of stuff. But from a drive and what he did at the time he did it with limited resources, ultimately, now that we look back at it, it's, it's, there's certain people that shine.

And when it comes down to it, I'm going to go back to what we started with, vision, adaptability, and authenticity. And her authenticity comes screaming through. And I think that's the one thing that, especially in this world of AI and all the direction that we're going here, is going to be needed even more. Because people are going to crave authenticity moving forward here when they don't know who to trust. And she's built her brand in a way that I think is, is pretty much unbreakable. So. For sure. I agree. Well, thanks for coming on, Kevin. I really appreciated this. Where can people find out more about the book? Where do you want to, where do you want to point them here? You can go to nothinglikethisbook.com.

You can check me out on LinkedIn at Kevin Evers or on Instagram. There is nothing like this. That book comes out April 8th. You can pre-order now. It's available wherever books are sold. Love it. Awesome, man. Well, look, I appreciate you coming on board here. And it kind of validates my evolution of understanding her, myself, and appreciation of her. Just not from a musical standpoint, from a business standpoint, a brand standpoint, and everything else and who she is. So hopefully she keeps going. And it's going to be fun to keep watching this ride. So thanks for coming on, Kevin. I really appreciate it. Thank you. This was fun. Yeah, absolutely. And everybody, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

And like I always say to all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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