739: What Leaders Should Learn from Taylor Swift, with Kevin Evers

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
You may love her music, you may not. You may think she’s a business genius or perhaps no. But one thing is for sure, you cannot ignore her. In this episode, what every leader can learn from Taylor Swift. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 739. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate. Learning, Maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coach Coaching for Leaders.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:32]:
And I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Taylor Swift is a powerhouse as a musician, as a brand, and absolutely as a businesswoman. There’s so much that leaders across all industries can learn from her example. What she’s done well, some of the missteps she’s made along the way and, and how we can lead more effectively. Perhaps being inspired a bit by her work. And I’m so pleased to welcome someone who’s done such incredible work of looking at her career and looking at it through the lens of strategy.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:15]:
I’m so pleased to welcome Kevin Evers. He is senior editor at Harvard Business Review. Kevin is passionate about shaping groundbreaking research and amplifying pioneering ideas. He has edited bestselling and award winning books on high performance, creativity, innovation, digital disruption, marketing and strategy. He’s the author of There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. Kevin, such a pleasure to have you on, Dave.

Kevin Evers [00:01:44]:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to this.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:46]:
Me too. And because I discovered very quickly in reading the book that you and I share something very similar in that our daughters are both of preteen age, they’re both Swifties. And as I was thinking about her appeal, Taylor Swift’s appeal that I came to one of the concepts you talk about in the book from Clayton Christensen and he had this beautiful concept of a job to be done. I’m wondering if you could share a bit of that concept with those who haven’t heard it before because I think she’s a really fascinating example of this.

Kevin Evers [00:02:25]:
I think so too. I think this really explains what Taylor does really well. So job to be done is a theory that essentially says that when customers buy a product, they’re not just buying the product, they’re hiring that product to do something for them. And think of the iPhone, right? We all have different jobs when it comes to the iPhone. When my kids were little, the iPhone wasn’t just the phone. It was a great way to connect with family. It enabled me to take pictures, it enabled me to FaceTime, my parents, it enabled me to share those photos. So if Apple has an understanding of that job to be done, then it can really create and fine tune that product.

Kevin Evers [00:03:07]:
Right? It can develop better software to help us share photos, it can develop better editing software, it can develop better camera for the phone, et cetera. And this is what Taylor does really well. She understands that her fans don’t just want music from her, they want connection, they want vulnerability and they want intimacy. And since Taylor has such a deep understanding of this, she is able to create songs and then create experiences around those songs that really appeal to her fans and business, we would say her customers. She really has a deep understanding of the inner lives of her fans and their wants and needs. And Clay has a great quote in his article about jobs to be done where he says, for products or companies that really understand the job to be done, they’re able to create products and experiences that can’t be copied and in some cases can’t be comprehended. And that fits Taylor to a T. You can hear it in the way she sings her songs, how it sounds like she’s whispering in your ear.

Kevin Evers [00:04:08]:
You can see it in her social media strategies, how it’s all about connection with her fans. It’s all about inside jokes that most people wouldn’t understand. But since her fans have such a deep knowledge of her, they do understand. And you can see it in her concert experiences. Even though she’s playing for 70,000 fans, it seems like a very intimate affair. Her face is never overwhelmed by the visuals. It’s always up there on the Jumbotron in 4K HD. And this is what Taylor is so good at.

Kevin Evers [00:04:36]:
And it’s why her fans are so attracted to her and why her fans stick around for so long.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:42]:
You write about this, “it’s clear that Swift was treating her fans emotions and experiences with respect. She was elevating the importance and legitimacy of what they felt and her fans responded in kind. This profound connection, sometimes elusive and intense, binds those who find solace in Swift’s music and a kind of unspoken communion.” I think about that paragraph and how true it is. Like when you talk with folks who love her music, when you listen to the Swifties talk about their experience of her, it is, it is a profound connection. It is way past just people liking her music. There’s such that deep understanding that she’s really conveying in her work.

Kevin Evers [00:05:29]:
I think this is why critics of hers or people who don’t quite like her music can’t comprehend or understand why she’s so successful. And she’s successful because of what you just read, but because of that deep connection with her fans. And this is especially important very early on in her career because Taylor was a teen girl writing songs for teenage girls. Now, traditionally, that’s not an audience that has been taken that seriously. Right. Even the Beatles, very early on in their career were pegged as a teenage girl band and were criticized for that. And the same happened with Taylor Swift, but she doubled and tripled down. And what she’s really good at and that connection with her fans, and she’s always done that.

Kevin Evers [00:06:13]:
She’s never run away from that job to be done. She understands what her fans are hiring her to do. And because of that deep, very deep emotional connection, she is able to do things that other artists can’t. And she’s able to forge relationships that many. I mean, most businesses struggle to do that and most artists struggle to do that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:33]:
Yeah. And I think, like what a premier example of the Blue Ocean strategy concept, right? Like country music had essentially written off teen girls as a demographic and she wasn’t taken seriously. And boy, did she prove the critics wrong by really zeroing in on, this is my audience. I know them, I speak to them, and I’m gonna show up for them in every way that I can. Both the quote unquote product, the music, Right. But also the emotional connection and the emotional needs that that demographic had. As you mentioned a bit ago, it’s a both and for sure.

Kevin Evers [00:07:13]:
And this is what surprised me the most because I didn’t know much about her early career. I didn’t know much at all about it really. And from an outsider’s point of view, you can look at Taylor and she looks like she’s out of country music central. Cassidy, right? The blonde hair, the blue eyes, she had that sassy boy eating attitude. Those are all country tropes. But the industry said, no, there’s no audience for teenage girls. We’ve tried it before, Right. We have past failures.

Kevin Evers [00:07:39]:
We have the data to show it’s a more dominant male dominated industry, especially in radio. But Taylor was so persistent and she understood that she loved country music, but wasn’t seeing herself in those songs on the radio. And her friends loved her music. And if she hadn’t persisted, I’m not so sure we’d be talking about Taylor Swift today.

Dave Stachowiak [00:08:03]:
Indeed. And when I think about that persistence, I mean, one of the things that I think a lot of us, when we think about leadership look to is we see other people out there and we Think like, wow, like what natural born leaders some people appear to be. And of course, everyone has their natural traits and their skills. And one of the things that’s like so striking about her her is you read about her at age 13, going into studios and sitting down for recording sessions and songwriting sessions with people who are three times her age. And she absolutely owns the room. And people show up for those, like, who’ve been in the industry for years and walk out of those meetings amazed at her talent and her confidence. And I’m wondering, as you dove in and like just looked at her and her history is that something that just like, naturally is who she is or. And I don’t even know if this is an and or, but.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:04]:
Or are there things that she did early on that helped her to really tap into that in a way that most people miss?

Kevin Evers [00:09:11]:
I think a lot of it comes naturally to her. I think very early on, as you mentioned, she was 13 in these rooms with men who were three to four times her age. I think she just had a very clear idea of the artist she wanted to be and the audience she wanted to hit. And I work in book publishing, I work with authors all the time, and that’s really rare to have such a clear vision. When I’m working with authors, we’re always talking about what audience are you trying to hit, what audience are you trying to hit? And Taylor knew that from a very early age. And I don’t know if it’s luck, if she just stumbled upon it, or if she just is gifted with having such a clear vision of what she wanted to do, but it did really help shape her career and it also helped shape the decisions that she made because she ended up making some decisions that on paper probably didn’t make much sense. She had major label interest. She had a development deal with rca, which was one of the biggest labels on Nashville’s Music Row.

Kevin Evers [00:10:14]:
And she decided to leave that development deal, then ended up signing a deal with a man named Scott Bruschetta, who was starting his own label. Now, that label didn’t have a headquarters, it didn’t have staff, and it didn’t have funding. But Taylor went with Scott because she believed that he believed in her vision. He told her, I’m never going to tell you to write someone else’s songs and I want you to write an album as soon as possible. And that was music to Taylor’s ears. So she ended up going with the who instead of the what. She ended up going with someone who really believed in her vision. And of course, that ended up really working out for her because she really needed someone who had skin in the game, who could hustle on her behalf.

Kevin Evers [00:10:55]:
Because the country music establishment was not going to fold. They were not going to accept Taylor with open arms because she was a teenager singing for teenage girls. But because she had such a clear vision, she had the ability to make what seemed like a bold decision on paper, but actually turned out to be a very sensible decision because Scott was the type of person, the type of hustler who could get things done.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:21]:
I was thinking about her commitment to vision and I highlighted one of the quotes that she had in an interview from a while back on vision that you highlight in the book. She said, I’d lie awake at night and think about the roaring crowd and walking out on stage and that light hitting me for the first time. But I was always very calculated about it. I would think about exactly how I was going to get there, not just how it would feel to be there. And I’m thinking about that quote in the context of what you said. Like on one hand, she is this incredibly clear vision of where she wants to go, who she’s serving, the job that, that she is doing the job to be done. And the thing that this sort of has changed my mind on in thinking about vision, because of course, like I’m talking with leaders about vision all the time, I’m inviting our members to think about vision in the future.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:22]:
What I hadn’t really thought of as clearly until, like reading about her, her example in this is also getting really clear on the work to get there and painting that picture and thinking through the things that were going to be difficult and tough. And she’s just so good at doing the both in that, isn’t she?

Kevin Evers [00:12:46]:
She’s always been a hard worker and a hustler. I don’t think anyone outworks Taylor. So it’s a lethal combination. She’s extremely talented, has great songwriting chops, but will also work and work and work and work and work. And you could see this too. Very early on in her career, she would go to each session with 20 or so ideas for songs because she knew that one, she needed to do that, she needed to write as many songs as possible. But two, she realized what the perception would be. She’s working with these professional Nashville songwriters and they’re getting a call, hey, there’s this 13 year old girl we want you to write with.

Kevin Evers [00:13:24]:
Well, obviously they’re going to be skeptical. They probably had never done something like that before. So she really had a clear understanding of, okay, I need to work and work and work and write as many songs as possible. But I also need to show others that I’m willing to work and that I’m willing to come in with ideas. And I’m not taking this for granted.

Dave Stachowiak [00:13:46]:
She is also, of course, human too, and I was interested in you. Highlighting a quote from Andy Grove, the founder of intel, who said, success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. And I think about her trajectory initially of her after her Fearless album, her second album. She had, she had made it. I mean, she was a superstar. She had in all sense of the word, like had had success and yet she was also paranoid. And you point out that that really helped her, didn’t it?

Kevin Evers [00:14:24]:
For sure. Her first three albums, I think it was about developing trust and consistency. Those albums didn’t change too much, right? They changed enough so her fans felt like they were getting something new, but they didn’t change so much that she alienated her fans. Well, that only lasts for so long. So when it came to her fourth album, she really started to make shifts, started to move more into pop music and she understood, and there’s quotes in the book where she talks about this, that she was in a pretty difficult situation. Even though she was coming off of multiple number one albums, she was now in her 20s. She was not a teenage act anymore. And many teenage artists struggle to make that jump into their 20s.

Kevin Evers [00:15:08]:
The consensus is their fans tend to outgrow the artist’s ability to adapt. And Taylor understood that even though all the data was showing her that she was a superstar, even all the data was showing her that she had a. A legion of fans. She was productively paranoid. Said, this may not last. And this is something that many artists struggle with. Elvis even struggled with this. He has a famous quote at the peak of his fame where he said, I’m afraid the light will go out just as soon as it went on.

Kevin Evers [00:15:43]:
And Taylor, despite those successes and despite her popularity, decided to change and to make a shift. And this is what she’s done her entire career. She doesn’t stay in the same place for too long. And that can be a hard thing to do. I struggle with that. We’re naturally risk averse. And I would imagine that if I was a superstar blockbuster author, I would be risk averse, right? Because I’m getting all this feedback that’s telling me I’m doing a really good job and I don’t want to lose that. But it takes a special type of person to say, you know what? Even though I have all the success, I really need to keep pushing the bounds of what I’m doing.

Kevin Evers [00:16:28]:
And that’s what Taylor did with her fourth album. She slowly started moving more into pop. And then of course, her fifth album, which was her big pop transformation, was an even bigger risk because she left country music completely behind and went fully into pop music. But you can see this throughout Taylor’s career. She makes decisions like this at times when you wouldn’t think she would need to make those decisions. But I think she understands that stasis and the status quo is and can be the death of an artist. And that she needs to evolve and change, especially at times when you wouldn’t think she would need to. She needs to get ahead of what her fans expect her to do.

Kevin Evers [00:17:09]:
And that’s a big reason for her longevity.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:12]:
There are so many points when she could have just retreated a bit, taken the safer path. She still would have been a superstar, People still would have been listening to her music. She just keeps pushing the envelope and sometimes it doesn’t land perfectly, but boy, she’s so consistent at that. It’s really incredible.

Kevin Evers [00:17:33]:
Her move to pop is one of the most misunderstood moves in pop music, I think, in music history. The consensus, at least among music critics at the time, was, well, she’s been evolving and she’s been moving toward pop for so long, it’s only inevitable that she’s going to move to pop music. Which was true, but from a business standpoint, it was a huge risk. There was a reason why her label pushed back really hard on her, while her management team did the same thing, because for years she had the best of both worlds. She had cornered country music and then she had cornered pop music. She was in two markets, and by moving into pop music, it wasn’t about changing the banjos to synthesizers. She was leaving an entire market behind, potentially. And that was country music.

Kevin Evers [00:18:20]:
All those relationships she had built for so long, all those radio placements, all those fans who love country music. And that was a risk. But as she always does, she tends to make very music first decisions. She does what’s best for her musically, and then she develops strategies afterwards. And that was especially the case with her move to pop music. And it worked out for her because she executed so well in that album. It’s called 1989. It’s one of the best selling pop albums of the 2010s, critically acclaimed.

Kevin Evers [00:18:53]:
And she ended up growing her audience while also growing her global appeal.

Dave Stachowiak [00:18:58]:
Yeah. It’s really interesting how she’s stayed ahead of that so consistently. And you cite Heidi Grant in the book and her distinction between prevention focus to promotion focused in the mindset that she’s used to approach big transitions like the transition to pop. What’s the distinction between those two? And what is it that she did so well there?

Kevin Evers [00:19:31]:
A prevention focused mindset tends to be risk averse. If you have a prevention mindset, you’re risk averse. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s all circumstantial. Right. It’s more about protecting what you have. A promotion mindset is the opposite. It says, if I make a risky move or a bold move, then I may see a lot of growth in return.

Kevin Evers [00:19:56]:
And Taylor, at certain points in her career has been prevention focused. You have to be if you’re a brand this big. Right. And we touched on it a bit earlier. She, for those first three albums of her career, I would argue that for the most part, at least sonically, she was prevention focused. And I think that was the right move at the time because it was all about building trust and consistency with her audience. But she couldn’t keep doing that. So at times she does have this promotion focused mentality where she will chase growth, she will face a lot of risk.

Kevin Evers [00:20:33]:
Yet in face of that risk, she will make a bold decision that often leads to. To growth or a surge in popularity. Not always, but it usually does.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:45]:
And she also, really, I think the pop transition is also just a really fascinating example of. She absolutely led the message and the story on that. She didn’t just show up one day with a new album and drop it and, like, expect folks to make the connection of what she was doing and how she was doing it. She led the story, the framing, the marketing around all of that. And boy, like, what a lesson for us, Any of us who are leading something and making a transition to actually get in front of it and to be the one that tells the story rather than leaving it to chance.

Kevin Evers [00:21:25]:
Yes, Swift takes her cues more from Steve Jobs than she does from other artists. Now, in music, it’s almost uncool to explain your art to people, right? But of course, in the business world, that’s what you need to do constantly. And Steve Jobs did such a great job of this. And this is what Taylor did when she made that huge transition to pop. Now, at the time, a lot of artists were struggling with ways to catch people’s attention because streaming was starting to take hold. The value of music was decreasing and it was really, really hard to release an album that would get a lot of attention. This was when you two YouTube worked with Apple and all of a sudden we all woke up one day and we had U2 on our phones.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:07]:
Oh yeah.

Kevin Evers [00:22:07]:
Jay Z, something with Samsung. Beyonce at the time, surprise, dropped an album. She just dumped it on itunes and didn’t tell anyone. And that caused like a huge sensation in the media. But Taylor did something different. Said she was making such a huge transition and her fans are so important to her. She hosted a live stream that was simulcast on ABC and she sat down without a co host. She acted like an over caffeinated morning TV show host and talked directly to her fans and put her new album in the language of personal growth and transformation.

Kevin Evers [00:22:41]:
She said, I really needed to make this change. I was changing as a person. My musical tastes were changing and this is what I really needed to do. Now this isn’t something that rock stars or pop stars tend to do, right? They’re not going to sit in front of an audience of their, of their fans on TV and explain a decision that they made. But it works really well for Taylor. She’s a great communicator. And I think by involving her fans in the process, by involving the fans in her own personal growth and transformation, that eased the transition for them and they were more willing to be evangelists for her and to go along with this huge transformation to pop music.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:22]:
And I think this comes back to the job to be done concept in that her fans of course are aging with her, are changing, their tastes, are getting older and like they’re in many ways going through the same change in taste and experience and thinking that she is as a human being and as an artist and she recognizes that, she sees that, she knows that. And then as you point out, she has that conversation with people and she makes that like such a clear connection to them.

Kevin Evers [00:23:57]:
That’s such a great point. Because since she came up as a teenage artist, that can be a challenge, right? It’s hard to make that transition into your 20s. But since Taylor was so good at doing that, she turns it into an advantage because her OG fans, those fans who have been along for the ride since the very beginning, they have such a deep connection with her because every album is a chance to check in with Taylor, right? And since Taylor is such a great communicator and she knows that her fans want that intimacy, they want that connection, she is able to age with her fans and that relationship grows deeper, right? And that’s pretty unique, right? And not many other artists have been able to do that. Maybe these days you could say Olivia Rodrigo will be able to do that and Billie Eilish will be able to do that as they grow older and their fans grow older. But this is something that Taylor really cherishes, and it’s another reason why that connection with her fans is very deep and very emotional.

Dave Stachowiak [00:25:10]:
She, of course, has made missteps along the way, as we all do in doing anything in leadership and in life. And through those missteps, she has grown in so many fascinating ways. And you highlight a word. There are many words that are used to describe her, but you highlight a word that I hadn’t heard described her before. And the word is antifragile. Tell me about that word.

Kevin Evers [00:25:38]:
That’s such a great word. It’s coined by Nassim Talib, who’s a scholar. He’s most famous for writing the book the Black Swan. Antifragile is a step up from resilient. Resiliency, to me, at least, means I went through a tough experience and I soldiered through, I got through it. Antifragile means not only did I go through these tough experiences, but I grew stronger as a result. Now, Talib uses the metaphor of fire and wind. Now, sometimes fire can extinguish a flame, but it can also make that flame grow stronger in some occasions.

Kevin Evers [00:26:18]:
So he says, you want to be the candle or you want to be the flame and wish for the wind. And that perfectly sums up Taylor Swift’s career. She has received her flowers. Don’t get me wrong, she receives a lot of praise, especially lately, a lot of breathless praise about The Eras Tor. Yet she’s also received a ton of criticism and she’s gone through a lot of controversies. Yet she finds a way to come out of those challenges, to come out of the criticism, to come out of those controversies stronger than when she began. And we saw this with when her RE records, when her master recordings were sold. This happened a few years ago.

Kevin Evers [00:27:02]:
Now, Taylor signed a contract. This is very typical in the music industry. The label owns the master recordings. Well, the head of her label, Scott Bruschetta, sold his label, which he had every right to do, and along with that, he sold Swiss master recordings for her first six albums. Now, this was devastating to Taylor and she thought that her life’s work was sold. She didn’t receive any money from that sale, and she lost some control over what she could do with that music, and she made a big stink about it. And she did receive a lot of criticism for that. Yet what does she do? She faces this challenge and she decides to do something that not many artists have done before.

Kevin Evers [00:27:43]:
She found a legal loophole and decided to re record her first six albums and she called them Taylor versions. Now that’s a crazy idea on paper to re record your albums that your fans had such a close relationship with and then to tell those fans, well, don’t listen to the old stuff, listen to the new stuff. But since she has developed such a close relationship with her fans, her fans went along with it. And those albums now are more successful, more successful than the original versions. At one point they were streamed 20 times more than the previous versions.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:18]:
Wow.

Kevin Evers [00:28:18]:
And she pulled it off. And that is a very typical Taylor move. And that’s why she’s anti fragile. This devastating thing happens to her, yet she turns it to her advantage and she ends up releasing these albums and they do extremely well. They increase her fan base and they also increase her connection with her original fans.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:47]:
And speaking about connection, I’m in the car with our 11 year old and one version comes up on screen that I’ve had on my playlist for 10 years and she says, dad, the better version is the one that’s got the Taylor’s version in parentheses. She doesn’t know the whole backstory, but she knows that that’s the one that Taylor wants her to listen to. And I think it is fascinating, like how this really huge obstacle she made work for her. And I think like, and it’s not just like, that’s just recent. Years ago she got criticism Taylor for the, the sound of her voice. And first and foremost, she’s always been a songwriter first and how does she respond to the criticism? She goes and gets vocal coaching and works on improving her voice. And boy, she did, didn’t she?

Kevin Evers [00:29:39]:
For sure. That happened in 2009. She, it was such a interesting time in her career because she was receiving so many flowers. She received album of the year at the Grammys. She was a huge superstar. This was after her second album, Fearless. And yet the criticism was extremely loud. This is when Kanye west went on stage, stole her mic at the VMAs and said, essentially said, you don’t belong here.

Kevin Evers [00:30:07]:
Beyonce is better. And she received a lot of criticism about her voice. So yes, she took that criticism to heart. She did improve her voice. But what she also did is for her third album, in the face of all this criticism, she doubled and tripled down on what she did really well. She didn’t try to change. She decided to make one of the most intimate and vulnerable albums of her career. She doubled and tripled down on all these Swiftian aspects that people are criticizing her for.

Kevin Evers [00:30:38]:
And she said, I’m only gonna. I’m gonna write this album all by myself. I’m not gonna use any co writers. Now, in typical Taylor fashion, she wasn’t silent about that. She turned that fact into a big part of her promotional campaign for her third album, Speak. Now she has a habit of turning these challenges and turning criticism into moments of empowerment for her and her fans.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:05]:
I often ask people what they’ve changed their minds on as they’ve done their work. And I’m sure as you’ve gotten into her work, you’ve changed your mind a bit on her in many ways. And I’m curious thinking about this from the concept of strategy, since that’s like one of the words in the title of the book is. I’m wondering, as you’ve gotten into her career and the choices she made along the way, I’m curious what, if any, mind shift, shift you’ve had or changed your mind on. Just the concept of strategy for leaders by learning from her.

Kevin Evers [00:31:43]:
I’ve learned so much from Taylor. And before I started researching and writing this book, I knew that Taylor was very business savvy, but I thought she was business savvy because she was a ruthless tactician, that she had absorbed the superstar playbook and relentlessly followed its steps. And what I discovered is the opposite. There’s a quote very early on in the book that I use from her acceptance speech at the Iheart Music Awards. She received the Innovator of the Year award. And she gets up on stage and she’s almost sheepish about it. She says, you know, I don’t wake up every day saying, I’m going to go innovate stuff. That’s not what I do.

Kevin Evers [00:32:25]:
I tend to make the best decisions for me based on the circumstances. And it just so happens that those decisions in some cases tend to be decisions that people haven’t made before. And that’s the way I view Taylor. So many people look at her and they see the sequins, they see the glitter, they see the Louboutin boots, all that stuff is great. But I think they see a safe superstar, a superstar who plays it safe. And that’s a big reason for her success. The opposite is actually true. What I found is that she tends to make bold decisions and she’s not afraid to make bold decisions.

Kevin Evers [00:33:01]:
And those bold Decisions, if you look at them, tend to be the moments where she experiences a surge in popularity and success. So that’s the way we should be viewing Taylor Swift. She is not a safe superstar. She makes very punk rock decisions and we should give her her flowers for that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:23]:
Kevin Evers is the author of There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. Kevin, thank you so much for your work.

Kevin Evers [00:33:31]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:39]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend one of them is episode 641, doing better than Zero Sum Thinking. Renee Maugborgne was my guest on that episode. We talked about her most recent book, Beyond Disruption. And of course her and her colleague W. Chan Kim are the folks who created the Blue Ocean strategy. Probably no better example or at least few better examples, certainly in Music of Blue Ocean Strategy than Taylor Swift. And Kevin talks about that strategy a bunch in the book. And Renee and I, when we talked on that episode, looked at the next step beyond Blue Ocean strategy, beyond Disruption.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:19]:
How to think about it now, today in this new age of disruption and change. Episode 641 a great compliment to this conversation. Also recommended episode 664, the reason people make buying decisions. Marcus Collins was my guest on that episode. I’m thinking about Marcus because he has had a bunch of experience in the music industry, specifically working with Beyonce and social media and marketing. He talked about that experience on that episode, looked at some of the aspects of strategy and music and leadership and social media all coming together. I think a fascinating conversation and a great consideration. Along with this episode today.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:56]:
Again, that’s episode 664. And then finally Taylor Swift, certainly an example of someone who continues to keep improvement at the top of her mind. That’s why I’m thinking about episode 697, how to keep Improving. Maurice Ashley was my guest on that episode. Chess’s First Black Grandmaster we had a conversation about improvement, how we continually get better. Of course chess players are thinking about that all the time. And of course every leader needs to as well.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:23]:
The world is changing very quickly. Improvement Key A key strategy for all of us as leaders. Episode 697 for that. All of those episodes, of course you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. We’re filing this episode under Strategy and Marketing. We have had many dozens of conversations in additions to the ones that I just mentioned over the years. I’m thinking about some of the conversations I’ve had with Seth Godin on the show over the years. He’s also mentioned extensively in Kevin’s book.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:52]:
It’s one of the many resources inside of the episode library. If you haven’t yet checked that out, go over to coachingforleaders.com set up your free membership. When you do, you’re going to get access to the entire library of episodes I’ve aired since 2011, searchable by topics. You can find exactly what you’re looking for right now. If you’re thinking about strategy marketing today, there’s a great place to start. But maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s coaching. Maybe it’s having difficult conversations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:20]:
Maybe it’s thinking about delegation so much there Inside the episode library Just set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com and when you do, you’re going to get access not only to that, but another library called Dave’s Library inside your free membership. And if you either haven’t set up your free membership or you have, but you haven’t gone in here before, when you log in for your free membership, you’ll see a link for Dave’s Library on the sidebar and when you click there, you can find whatever topic you’re looking for. What I have done is I have databased in that library. Everything else beyond the podcast resources from others, videos, YouTube articles, journals, podcasts from other folks. All of that’s inside Dave’s Library. And I just clicked on the strategy tag in there and I pulled up an article from Rebecca Homkus, who was on the show earlier this year, on how we can use uncertainty to grow. A great TED Talk from Kat Cole is in there. The Art of Asking smarter questions from HBR McKinsey’s report on the essential checklist for CEOs Seth Godin’s writings and research.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:30]:
Some information from Tom Henschel. There’s a ton inside there and that’s just on strategy. I have done all the work for you. Found what I think are the best articles, podcasts, YouTube videos. The things that when I find and I find valuable for me, I take them. Not only pass them along in the weekly Leadership Guide, but database them inside of my own library. You have full access to that as a free member. Just go over to coachingforleaders.com set up your free membership and you will be off and running with us on that and many more benefits inside the free membership Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:11]:
Next Monday I’m glad to wait. Welcome back to the show. Michael Bungay Stanier we are going to be having a conversation on how to lead change. Join me for that conversation with Michael, and I’ll see you back next week.