Latest news with #KevinEvers
Forbes
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Taylor Swift's Leadership Playbook, According to Kevin Evers
LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 15: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO STANDALONE PUBLICATION USE (NO SPECIAL INTEREST ... More OR SINGLE ARTIST PUBLICATION USE; NO BOOK USE)) Taylor Swift performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Wembley Stadium on August 15, 2024 in London, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management ) I recently spoke with Kevin Evers, senior editor for Harvard Business Review, about his new book There's Nothing Like This. The book centers on Taylor Swift's defining skills as a musician and brand founder--and the ups and downs she's faced in both arenas. Evers says leaders have much to learn from Swift's twenty years in the public eye. Evers and I talked about some of the key attributes that have served Swift well in her ascent to her current status as a musical living legend. These attributes may also serve you in your leadership roles, both in your personal life and in your organization. Swift has had her share of public tiffs with other industry titans. For instance: Swift's many-years feud with rapper Kanye West. The feud began when West interrupted Swift's acceptance speech for Female Music Video of the Year at the Video Music Awards in 2009. Swift addressed the controversy in her next album, Speak Now, with the song 'Innocent,' on which she seems to forgive West for taking her mic. Yet the feud was not over, and over ensuing years many claimed Swift was 'playing the victim' in the story. Swift spoke of the feud differently on Reputation, her 2017 album, in which she directly addresses the feud with confrontational songs like 'Look What You Made Me Do' and 'This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.' On both albums, Swift turned a difficult personal experience into chart-topping hits. It can be hard to take a risk –for example, to take a next, bold move after your presentation is panned by a potential partner or you're fired by long-standing client. Dig deep. Rather than shying away from the experience, make your next move bold. You can do as Swift does and choose the narrative to which you will give your attention. Hone your craft and alchemize the negative experience. The singer/songwriter was heavily criticized for being a bad singer. One stark moment was when she sang with Stevie Nicks at the Grammys in 2010. She was completely panned and criticized for that moment--by fans, and also by other leaders in the music industry. Swift decided to work harder to improve her singing. She also doubled down on her strongest suit as a musician: her writing. At the time of the Grammy's performance, Swift was already a huge star. She could have ignored the criticism. However, Swift took what she could from the experience and worked on her vocals, while keeping the focus on her writing, which has always been what sets her apart. You as a leader need to listen to feedback and criticism if you're going to get better. However, don't fixate on the negative. Bolster yourself in areas where you're not strong, and double down on your strengths. One of the most important aspects of Swift's rise to the top is her relationship with her fans. In the early days of her career, Swift would spend hours after a concert signing autographs and talking to the fans, sometimes even giving five hundred autographs in a single night. As a leader, take note. Look at your customers and clients. How can you overdeliver? How can you spend extra time and attention showing you care? Instead of constantly prospecting for new clients, give extra love and attention to the clients you already have. They are your true believers—and your most reliable source of revenue. Taylor Swift is never outworked and always over-delivers. One example: Swift's controversy with Scooter Braun, her former manager. Swift and Braun publicly feuded when, according to Swift, she was not given a chance to buy the masters' rights to her first six albums. Swift took the bold step of re-recording all of the albums. Another instance of Swift's overdelivering: the Eras Tour. Swift was on tour for over one and a half years, singing three and a half hours of music in cities all around the world. It's important to remember as a leader: even if you are at the top of your game, don't take your success for granted. Keep looking for ways to delight your clients and work hard to overdeliver. Continue to look for ways you can stand out from the competition. Swift convinced her parents to move the family to Nashville when she was a young teenager. With her trademark focus and hard work, Swift believed she had what it took to be successful. She signed with an unknown record label, toured relentlessly, and connected with fans using nascent social media. From a young age, Swift had a preternatural belief in herself and the guts to take big risks. Take a page from Swift and ask: how can you batter down the door of where you most want to be? You might keep hearing 'no' from a client or being passed over for promotions—but there are other ways to get your foot in the door and line yourself up for opportunities. Get scrappy. Dream about the possibilities, and then get busy. Be proactive; have a plan in place for when the perfect opportunity arises. Evers says the three big lessons leaders can learn from Swift are: scale by leveraging the customer, stay committed, and relentlessly overdeliver. Have an attitude of 'Never let a customer go' and treat them with the same attention Swift treats her fans. Evers also noted Swift's antifragility; she can recover, and even benefit from, adversity—and use it to soar even higher. Leaders can adopt this same antifragility and keep moving forward despite setbacks.
Harvard Business Review
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Harvard Business Review
What We Can Learn from Taylor Swift
When our colleague Kevin Evers wrote There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift, we knew we had to talk about it. For so many women, she's a role model—personally and professionally. Four HBR Swifties highlight how her instincts and decisions offer lessons in leadership, strategy, and staying power. Resources:
Axios
11-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
Harvard Business Review editor wrote the book on Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift could teach business leaders in every sector a thing or two. At least that's what the editor of the Harvard Business Review thinks. What he's saying:"Taylor Swift has conquered the music industry," said editor Kevin Evers, who recently released a book analyzing the Nashville-based megastar through a business lens. "And she's managed to achieve all this during a time when the industry has undergone profound technological and business model shifts." Zoom in: Evers' book"There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift" seeks to understand "how and why she keeps winning." "Swift has displayed such a remarkable ability to innovate — and to make sophisticated strategy and marketing moves — that it's worth trying to draw lessons from her career, the same way we study traditional business visionaries such as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos." The bottom line: In an article that doubles as an overview of his book, Evers attributes her success to her ability to adapt to "radical shifts" and to tap untapped markets.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Taylor Swift can teach us about career-building
Kevin Evers, a senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, is well-versed in the winning moves and missteps of business leaders. In his new book,'There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift,' Evers takes a run at a case study of Swift's strategic business moxie, which has propelled her stardom and wealth from a teenager singing in a Tennessee mall to a multibillion-dollar global business. I asked Evers to share his analysis of what we can all learn from Swift about managing our careers and more. Below are excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. Kerry Hannon: What are the big lessons startup founders or those of us managing career shifts can learn from how Taylor Swift has managed her career? Kevin Evers: If you look at the early part of her career, the reason why she found so much success and popularity early on is that she tried to seize an opportunity that others had ignored. She was a teenager trying to write music for teenage girls, and the consensus in country music was there's no audience for that. She really pushed, and she ended up breaking into a market that others had ignored. I don't think we'd be sitting here today talking about Taylor Swift if she hadn't been so headstrong about the artist she wanted to be and the market she wanted to reach. Part of Taylor's success is that she's a great storyteller. What role can storytelling play for the rest of us as we pivot and change? Storytelling is huge. Taylor never lets change just sit by itself. She always talks to her fans in a very intimate and personal way and explains why she's making changes. The biggest example of this is when she left country music behind and went full-on pop with her album "1989." Around that time there were so many other artists who were coming up with novel ways to release their music. U2 partnered with Apple; Jay-Z partnered with Samsung; Beyoncé surprise dropped her album, but Taylor decided to have a livestream where she could talk to fans directly. She acted like an over-caffeinated "Good Morning America" host. And she talked in very personal terms. She talked about her change as a form of personal development and growth. If she didn't do that, I'm not so sure her fans would've gone along with the change so gracefully. That's a really important point — you need to communicate why you're making changes, your values, and why that change is important for the people, your customers, your partners, or other relationships that you have. What are the top leadership qualities that make her successful? Talent is important. Skills are important, but Taylor has known from very early on in her career that her relationships are probably her most scalable asset. She goes above and beyond for her fans, and that's really critical to her success. Her action shows that she understands that superstars aren't self-made, they're created by fans. You could say the same thing for the rest of us too. Yes, it's important to be talented. Yes, it's important to grow your skills, but it's fostering those relationships around us that really contribute the most to our success. You have a quote in the book from her: 'What I tried to do is make the right decisions for me.' How can we learn from that mindset? So many times when we're trying to do something new or trying to grow in our careers, we look around us, we look to copy other people — what have other people done? But what makes Taylor so successful is she's always done what's right for her. She's never sat in a boardroom, at least as far as I know, and tried to strategize on what's the best way to go about something. She always looks at the context, and she does what's right for her. If she had tried to copy other people, I'm not so sure that she would've found such popularity and success. What can we learn from how she navigated her missteps? She's had plenty of missteps. What's important is she has a way of turning those missteps into sources of empowerment for her and her fans. For example, in 2009, she had a very controversial moment at the "MTV Video Music Awards," where Kanye West went on stage, stole her microphone, and said, 'I'm going to let you finish. But Beyoncé had the best video of all time.' So what Kanye was saying is, you're not talented enough, you don't belong here. And Taylor has since said that that was a pretty devastating moment for her. Afterward, she was heavily criticized for her voice, her persona. She took some of that criticism to heart with her third album. She really tried to improve her vocals with vocal lessons. She turned that into a moment of growth. But she also turned it into a moment of empowerment because, for that third album, she said, well, if you're going to criticize me, well, I'm going to write this album all by myself. I'm not going to use any co-writers. Then, she used that as promotion for her album to her fans. It turned into a moment of empowerment for her. How does Taylor exemplify strategic thinking? It's hard to manage a career and gain new skills, to realize what skills you need, but it's much easier to navigate if you can find your own niche. And that's exactly what Taylor did. As all these other artists and all these other record companies were fighting over the same radio placements, Taylor saw an opportunity. She saw how she was different, and then she maximized that difference to great success. That's something we can all learn from. You need to find your niche and then develop your strengths and your vision based on that niche. What about gut instinct? Taylor's very intuitive. This is something that surprised me the most when I wrote this book because she has a reputation for being calculated — and not in a good way. I found that she's very intuitive. She makes a lot of her decisions based on gut instincts. And that doesn't mean that she's shooting from the hip. That instinct comes from experience and her clear vision for the artist she wants to be. If you look at a lot of her decisions, they're not based on boardroom analytics. She's not sitting around with her team and looking at the data and trying to strategize. Her move to pop music was driven by the fact that her musical tastes were evolving. She was more interested in pop music than country music. And so she went for it. You write that she has commented that whenever anyone tells her she can't do something, she wants to do it more. Elaborate? Mindset is critical. She built her career on a more prevention-focused mindset about building trust and consistency and not changing so much that she alienated her fans. She really protected her music and really protected her brand. She didn't want to change too much. It was incremental changes, not rocking the boat. Then when she moved to pop, that was a bold decision. She was very vocal about why she was making these changes. She was in her mid-twenties and she framed it as that. She's said: My life has changed, so my music needs to change with it. That mindset helped her push through because she got a lot of pushback from her team.A lot of entrepreneurs get to a point where they built their product, and they think it should just speak for itself. How does Taylor's approach toss that in the water? One of the biggest mistakes founders make is that they're obsessed with their product, but they're not equally obsessed with their customers or their users. Taylor is equally obsessed with her fans as she is with her product. She always has been. She's always gone to great lengths to delight her fans. She reminds me of a quote from Jeff Bezos in one of his shareholder letters, and I'm going to paraphrase here, but he said, our customers are delightfully dissatisfied. They may say that they like our business and they like our products, but deep down, customers always want more. And it's our job to delight them, to continually find new ways to delight them. That fits Taylor to a T. Her actions have always shown that she knows that the fans are what got her here and that it's her job to continually delight them and to grow those relationships. Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work" and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. 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Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Local author details how Taylor Swift became 'mastermind' of the music industry
(WSYR-TV) — The phenomenon that is Taylor Swift has become more than just chart-topping hits. It's become big business for local economies lucky enough to host her concerts. According to the New York Times, her latest tour, The Eras Tour, generated over two billion dollars in ticket sales alone; More than doubling the previous record holder. Kevin Evers, is a senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, and joined Bridge Steet Monday to discuss his new book which takes a dive deep into the success behind the 'Mastermind.' The book is title 'There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.' It comes out April 8th. You can preorder the book and find out more information about Evers by visiting Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
