Women at Work - What We Can Learn from Taylor Swift

0:00You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo, here with Maureen Hoek, who's the editor of hbr.org and who has a book recommendation for us. Hi, Amy. Hi, Maureen. So my recommendation is a new book from our colleague, Kevin Evers, who's a senior editor here at HBR. And it is called There's Nothing Like This, The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift.

0:27I have to tell you, I'm very proud to work for an outlet that has published a book about Taylor Swift. And so here's a question for you, actually. Yeah. What do you know of the strategic genius of Taylor Swift? Well, as the mom of a teenager, when I hear Taylor Swift's name, I get a little disappointed that I didn't raise a Swiftie because I felt like that was going to be my entree into her. So I haven't been as much into her music as I sort of want to be, although folklore did get me through some dark pandemic times. But I have been a real keen observer as someone who thinks about women and work and have just always been impressed with her career and how she manages her brand and herself. And of course, it's hard to miss the controversy and the shade thrown her way. And she just always bounces back and always continues to build this amazing.

1:23business. So how did you get into Taylor Swift? Is Irene a Swiftie? Irene, my daughter, my 10-year-old daughter, I don't know if she'd call herself a Swiftie, but she does have a lot of interest in and admiration for Taylor Swift. And I think one of the things that Taylor does well is she knows how to hit a moment, right? You know, she's got a really good sense of timing when she was on SNL and did the 10-minute version of All Too Well. I sat with two friends and watched that.

1:51We were just so fascinated by her and the spectacle of it all, and she killed it. Well, and Harper, who, my daughter who's not a Swiftie, made us sit down and watch that with her. Yeah. Yeah, I have to say her strategic genius was really so clarified for me when my mom, who's almost 80, sometime over the past year during, I think it was toward the end of the Ares tour, said to me, do you know who I have a lot of respect for? I said, who mom? And she said, Taylor Swift.

2:20And I thought, oh man, Taylor is doing something right to be able to reach your 10-year-old daughter, to reach us as middle-aged women, and to reach my mom. It's amazing. I haven't read the book yet. It's on my list, but tell me what Kevin, how he captures what's so smart about her approach. So, I mean, I like that it wasn't just a book for somebody who is a fan of Taylor's. This is a book for anyone who's interested in successful business strategy, and unless you've been Literally living under a rock you have probably seen been exposed to her fame the tours the football games You know like what is it that actually got her there? Like this is a good book for that because it's it's looking at the decisions she made like pivot points in her career and I like the fact that Kevin looked at it not just through You know the genius part of it, but there are hits and misses right like every every successful person has ups and downs

3:19has things that go right and wrong. So I appreciated that piece of it, too. Yeah. Yeah. But it is also a book for fans. It is. It is. And we have some big fans in this building at HBR. So you had a conversation with three of our fellow HBR Swifties. Tell us. That is true. It was right in this room. And it was with Caitlin Ameren, Courtney Cashman, and Susan Francis.

3:45And we sat at this very table and we basically had a mini book club to talk about what we learned from the book and what those insights meant to us, including knowing what your strengths are, knowing what you want and what you don't want, which is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things to know, pushing forward even when people doubt you, all of those things. Yeah, it sounds like classic women at work territory. I love the idea of knowing who you are.

4:12as a person but as a business and knowing what your fans slash customers want. Exactly. And her ability to marry those. Okay, I'm super bummed now I wasn't at the table. You would have had fun. I would have. Next time. But here's our conversation edited down to the length of my favorite Taylor Swift song, All Too Well, 10 minute version. Caitlin, why don't you start us off? Yeah.

4:41So the first time I had ever heard of Taylor Swift was during the Jonas Brothers 3D concert movie when I was in fifth grade. She came out and saying should have said no. I was like, oh, I kind of like that girl. And then I remembered that summer like Fearless had just come out and you belong with me came on the radio love story came on the radio. And my mom started buying me her albums and kind of saying here you go because she thought that Taylor was a really great role model. And then the fact that she was bullied in school, I was bullied as well.

5:11I would listen to the best day. I'm sure you guys will listen to it. That was like my mom's song and she also cries through that because that talks about like the bullying and like your parents like waiting for you to shine as well and being there for you. How about you Susan? So I've always been a music person my whole life all genres except country so I knew who she was of course but was not my cup of tea but then I went to visit my niece who was like five years old and I was sitting next to her in the car.

5:40And she's looking out the window and singing along with such deep feeling about how she got tired of waiting and wondering if you were ever coming around and how her faith in you was fading. It just made me sit up that she was connecting with lyrics and experiences that presumably she hadn't had yet. But it wasn't until it came into my house because of a hiring mistake because I needed a new babysitter for my girls.

6:05So I did driving record, background check, resume, reference check, all of that. I never thought to ask about babysitter's favorite genres of music or artists. So our dear Lizzie introduced my kids to country and to Taylor Swift. And they would ask me to tune the radio to country music and play Taylor Swift. So that was how she came to be in my house. Courtney. So mine was also through family. My daughter, was four at the time. She's six now. So I'm very old school in my listening habits. I still listen to the radio. So we'd be in the car and one day she just asked, who sings this? And it was a Taylor Swift song. And the next time we're in the car, she hears again, she's like, who was this? Taylor Swift. Well, then she started only recognizing songs by Taylor Swift in the car. And then I took her to the era's movie and she loved it.

7:04And she started listening to 1989 every night before bed. Now it's lover. But in doing all that with her, I started really enjoying the music much more than I had when I would hear a one-off song on the radio and listening through the whole albums. And I was basically drawn in as well. One of the things that I'm really enjoying about this conversation is the fact that you all are moms and that you were forming your Taylor Swift fandom through your children and for me that was something that I shared and still share with my mom. She was the one that was buying the albums for me and you know when 1989 came out on the release day I came home and the album was there for me after school and I went to the 1989 tour with my mom and then she didn't get to come with me to the Eris tour.

7:56And I faced time to her during love story because that's one of her favorite songs and she was just crying, listening to it. You know, I feel like I hear stories all the time about parents hating like their kids' music and just to have someone that you can connect with and say, oh yeah, that is someone that I want my child like looking up to. I think is so powerful and the fact that she also transpasses generations, I think is really important too. I mean, one thing I really admire about her is knowing who she is.

8:25but also just her ambition and like willingness to hold out for what she wants. You know, if I relate that to how women function in the workplace, you're not always encouraged to be super ambitious or you're constantly feeling like you have to settle in some way. There were a lot of times where she said, no, I don't want that, I want this. That was inspiring to me. Yeah, I was also really impressed with just how well she knew and could tell someone her own strengths. I feel like that's something that we're always told to do is to know your strengths, play to your strengths. I'm not sure that I could give you a list of what my strengths are. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could start describing them. But she seemed to just have this way of being like, I am a songwriter. I know what I am doing. I'm good at it. And I'm going to tell these people who have been in the industry for decades.

9:23that I am good at it and this is how I'm gonna do it. Like this was back when she was just trying to get a label or she had just signed on with a label and that's really impressive not just for someone that age and new to the business but as you were saying Maureen that's not exactly something that's applauded for women either. Right and Kevin talks about that too in the book that.

9:45Even though all along she's been like, I am a storyteller and I'm obsessed with my fans that when she got critiqued for her voice, the quality of her voice, that didn't always apply to other men. You know, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and Neil Young and like, oh, well, yeah, maybe their voices aren't great, but they're storytellers and that's their value where she just gets the criticism without the sort of balance of, oh, but great story. I mean...

10:10any sort of celebrity, let alone someone who's putting themselves out there as much as she is with her songwriting and her authenticity, is going to get negative feedback and not know which is the real negative feedback and which are just people who are haters. Haters gonna hate. Yep. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate. But she took it and listened. I mean, after people were saying she had a terrible voice, she got vocal coaching and training.

10:38She was already a success at that point. She didn't have to, but she did. And that's something that Kevin explores in the book. She really did take it to heart and say, where do I need to improve? What do you think is next for her? What do you hope to see her do? Do you want my crazy fan? So I feel like I am very much...

11:01in the camp of like the Swifties who clown and who are waiting for Reputation Taylor's version to come out every other day. So what I think she's going to do, I've noticed a pattern with the re-releases of her masters. She releases two per year and then releases another album. So what I think she's going to do is re-release Reputation Taylor's version and Taylor Swift Taylor's version this year. She'll release another album.

11:29in 2026 and then tour in 2027. I do wonder where she might go outside of just music though. Taylor could very well go in the same kind of direction where she starts her own enterprises. Or maybe she goes behind the scenes where she's starting to produce other people's tracks and help them out to help out the next generation of musicians. Starting her own label is something that I've thought about too because her passion about rights for artists. I could see her starting her own label and basically being like, here's the money. You own your masters. I have this platform. I wish I had had it when I was starting. I want to give back. That is a really great example for all women that are in positions of power. We need to be sticking up for people that are beneath us in our organizational structures and standing up for them, advocating for them.

12:25helping them find avenues to get to the place that they want to be in their career. We know she has a plan, right? Like, she has proven to us, and Kevin has captured it, that she always has a plan, and she has the vision, and it's not just what she wants someday, but all the steps that she's gonna take to get there. She just hasn't kind of let us in on it yet, or she's let us in on the game, and we just haven't figured it out yet.

12:52And I think what you just said, Susan, is what stuck out to me is it's not just she has a vision. She has the steps she needs to take to get there. And she's had that. I mean, that was back when she was a teenager. She had the exact same thing. She knew where she wanted to go, but she had the steps how to get there. And I think as anyone is thinking about their career, that's always feels like the hardest part. I can say I want to be this leader.

13:20but you also need to know how to get there. And that's something that struck me because it's hard as I'm in my 40s, it's hard as a 40-something. She was doing it at 15. And not just of knowing what she wants, but asking for it. And I'm thinking of the story Kevin tells in the book about how she called in to a radio show when Tim McGraw was being interviewed. I was like, hey, Tim, when are you gonna start having opening acts and have me be one of them?

13:49I'm curious, did your impression of Taylor change at all from reading the book? Yeah, I'll admit to that. Probably because I am so new to really learning the details. All she had to do to get where she was. Going back and listening to those songs, I have a newfound respect for them. She has done a lot that she does not get credit for. So my impression of her actually didn't change.

14:19Because as a fan, this is all stuff that I was very aware of. I'm just happy that we are recognizing someone who has a phenomenal work ethic who has not always been celebrated for that. You can buy There's Nothing Like This at store.hbr.org or wherever you like to buy books. And in a recent HBR Idea Cast episode, the book's author, Kevin Evers, explains what all leaders can learn from Taylor Swift.

14:51This is a classic entrepreneurial story. She seized an opportunity that other people were ignoring. So let's go back. She's 14 years old, 15 years old. She wanted to write her own songs, which at the time was rare in country music, especially for someone her age. It's usually done by professional songwriters. And she wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers, teenage girls. That was a market that executives in country music, based on data and based on past failures, said that market doesn't exist.

15:20But she said, I listen to country music. I'm not hearing songs that talk about my own perspective. My friends are listening to country music. So she was really close to her fan base, her customer base. It's a classic blue ocean strategy. She went after an audience that people didn't think existed. And because of that, she found great success because she really didn't have much competition once she broke through. Find the link to that idea cast episode in our show notes.

15:49Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoek, Tina Toby-Mack, Hannah Bates, Rob Eckart and Ian Fox. Robin Moore composed the show's theme music. Every week Maureen actually puts out an insider newsletter where she has lots of recommendations. Tell us a little bit about it Maureen.

16:09Sure. So The Insider is just for HBR subscribers. And each week, I work with a team of editors to recommend articles, books, podcast episodes, videos, events that we're putting on. All of these weekly recommendations are one of the perks of subscribing to Harvard Business Review. So if you're not a subscriber yet, please head over to hbr.org slash subscribe. I'm Amy Gallow.

16:34Get in touch with me and Amy B by emailing women at work at hbr.org.