Kris Safarova  00:45

Welcome to the strategy skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download we prepared for you, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And you can download it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. And lastly, you can get a copy of a book we co-authored with some of our amazing clients. And it went to number one, best of all, on Amazon. And it is all about leadership. It’s called Nine Leaders in Action, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/gift. And today we have an amazing guest. We have Kevin Evers, who’s a Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review, and the author of the new book that is called There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. Welcome Kevin.

Kevin Evers  01:54

Thank you. So great to be here.

Kris Safarova  01:57

Amazing to have you with us. So firstly, I wanted to focus a little bit on your career, because I know you have so much to say. So maybe we could start with what was your path to become a senior editor at Harvard Business Review?

Kevin Evers  02:09

Yeah, so my background actually isn’t in business. Originally, I went to grad school for film studies. It was a very bad life decision that I made, but I recovered and I ended up working at Harvard Business Review. I’ve worked for Harvard Business Review close to 15 years now, so I made you myself, and I work in our books division. So I edit and acquire books. My main job is to scout for talent, scout for authors, scout for great ideas, and then once I sign those books to help authors develop those ideas and to maximize, maximize their impact in the marketplace.

Kris Safarova  02:49

That is very important role to play in the world, because obviously people trust Harvard, and so they select books often because it was published by you guys. And so the authors you select get in front of a lot of people.

Kevin Evers  03:02

For sure. Yeah, we’re highly selective, and the brand power is really important. And that’s a that’s power that’s been developed over the last 100 years or so. So it’s definitely helps to work for a really strong, strong brand like Harvard Business Review, especially when I’m recruiting authors, doesn’t take much of a pitch to convince people that they should do a book with us.

Kris Safarova  03:25

You mentioned that film studies, selecting film studies as a topic to study, was not the best decision. Why did you fall this way? And how were you able to pivot?

Kevin Evers  03:36

Film studies. It’s a great subject, but there aren’t many jobs in film studies. I thought I may go on to get my PhD, but it’s highly competitive and highly selective. And although I could have gone on that track, once I was in grad school, I realized that’s not really what I want to do. Yeah, and I pivoted, because what I realized when I was studying filmmakers that I love the creative process. I did a lot of writing in grad school. I really loved writing. I loved the collaboration process, and that led me to publishing. As much as it seemed like a big jump, it really wasn’t. The subjects are different film business, but as an editor, I can really use my creative instincts. I can use my writing skills, my collaboration skills, to really help authors shape their ideas.

Kris Safarova  04:32

What do you think were some pivotal moments that shaped your career once you transitioned?

Kevin Evers  04:38

You know, being a book editor is really interesting, because every project is different. It’s like being a TV producer who produces a lot of content, a lot of different stories. One of the pivotal moments, I don’t know if it was so much a moment, but something I realized is when you’re helping people shape their ideas. Is, the difficult part is, sometimes I want to, I want to make it the best book possible, and sometimes it’s difficult. Really, my job is to help the person make the best book that they can write. And it took me such a long time to realize that, because if you’re trying to make the best book possible, you may interfere with their vision for the project. They may have an idea, but if you’re really trying to push it in a different direction, you may not necessarily hurt that idea, but you may go through a tough process with that collaborator. And the more and more I edit, the more and more and more I realize, okay, my job is to really help authors execute on their vision for the project. Of course, there’s a lot of back and forth about what that vision is, but once we’ve settled on that vision, that’s my main job, and knowing that has made my job so much easier.

Kris Safarova  06:00

I immediately thought about how I manage podcasts. When I am doing a podcast with someone like you, it is about sharing with our listeners what you know. There are many other places, books and so on, where people can jump from me, but when I’m here with you, it’s about what you know, and bringing it to the world. So I can completely understand what you mean. What are some of the most impactful business or strategy books that you have worked on as an editor so far, and what common teams emerge in great business writing?

Kevin Evers  06:34

So I edit books in all sorts of subjects, from marketing, creativity, innovation, leadership, you name it. The joke that I always use is it feels like I edit everything but cookbooks. So if anyone has a good business cookbook out there, I’m all yours. So some of the best books that I’ve published are most impactful books I’ve published. I publish a book called How finance works by Mahir Desai that was released a few years ago. That’s a book. So the dream for a publisher, you want a book to do really well in the beginning, of course, at launch, and that’s the period that everyone focuses on. But you want a book that sells 345, years after it releases. That’s the ultimate goal, and that’s a book that’s absolutely done that it did well in its first year, but it continues to sell year in year out, which just proves, if you have a book like that, you know that you hit the bullseye, you know that’s resonating with readers, and that you filled a need that was there once the book was published, but continues to be there. So that’s really rewarding. I love books that are a little out of the sweet spot of what you would think HBr would publish. I published. You know, I wrote a book about Taylor Swift. So that’s, that’s one of them. But, yeah, I love books that push, that push the boundaries, and are more commercial focused. So there’s a book mind masters that just came out by Sandra Matz. She’s a pioneering researcher on psycho on psychological targeting. That book is great, and I have a book coming out after mine in April called like the button that changed the world by BCG strategist named Martin Reeves, along with his co author Bob Goodson, who used to work at Yelp, and so he was part of the founding team that developed the like button. And that book is a tour de force through the history of the like button. And also, you know, why is it that this like button had such a profound impact on our online behavior? And also looks at the historical precedents for the like button, going back to Roman gladiators. It’s a really fun but also really smart read. So those are the books I really love to publish. Are the ones that are fun, that are great reads, but are also intellectually rigorous and research-based.

Kris Safarova  08:48

What is the most challenging part of editing books on business strategy or any topics that you are editing?

Kevin Evers  08:56

The challenge with every book is the process is never smooth or linear. Writing is really, really hard, even if you have a great proposal, even if you have a clear idea of what you want to do, once the words go from your brain to the paper, it’s it’s not a linear process. Things go awry all the time. So that’s the difficult part. Is trying to figure out, okay, we had a we had a vision for this project, but now I’m looking at words on a screen, words on paper that don’t quite live up to that vision. So it’s trying really hard to figure out what the main problems are that can be the most difficult part, because no project comes across my desk that’s in perfect shape. It just it doesn’t happen. Some projects are better than others, but that’s part of the creative process. I’ve worked with authors who’ve written 10 books, and sometimes they send me great manuscripts, and sometimes they send me manuscripts that have a lot of problems. Problems. So that’s that’s always the challenge. It’s trying to figure out what’s the main problem that we’re trying to solve for, what do readers really want out of this book, or what will they really want out of this book? And so how do we make adjustments to make sure that readers are satisfied?

Kris Safarova  10:18

That you often publish books by someone who self published some books, and you see they are really, really high quality, and then you do a book with them.

Kevin Evers  10:26

We’ve done it once or twice. I haven’t done it personally. It’s it’s a tricky business. Some self published books do really well in the business space. It depends. So it’s definitely something I’m on the lookout for but I haven’t done it personally.

Kris Safarova  10:44

How has your work as an editor influenced your own understanding of business strategy and business in general, and are there any key lessons that you could share with us that really shaped your thinking?

Kevin Evers  10:56

It’s a great question. I would say. The great thing about being an HBr editor is I’m allowed to be a fierce generalist, meaning I’m allowed to know and learn a little about a lot of subjects, which is the best part of my job. I can edit books on innovation. I can edit books on creativity. I can edit books on leadership, so I’m constantly absorbing a lot of information, but as an editor, I’ve also learned that when you put a book into the marketplace, so many things need to go right? Book publishing is a culture market. There’s a lot of luck, there’s a lot of randomness, and social influence plays a large role too. So think of Harry Potter. The editor of Harry Potter did not think that book would sell 10s of millions of copies. There’s no way. I don’t know that for sure, but I can guarantee they did not think that book would do that well. So that’s the that’s always the challenge. It’s trying to figure out, or trying to predict how a book will do, but also understand that there’s so much beyond our control. And so what I’ve learned in the long run is the things I do have control on is, let’s make this the best book possible. Let’s make this the best book that the author that I’m working with can write, because that’s the only thing we have control over.

Kris Safarova  12:26

Exactly, I agree with you 100%. It is such a waste of energy time help to focus on things we cannot control, and at that time, we could have been doing something that actually would make an impact. For sure. How do you search for authors? How do you search for them? And then how do you select them? Anything that you could share?

Kevin Evers  12:46

A lot of different ways. So some authors come to me through literary agents who I’ve developed relationships with. Those are that’s the best way to reach me. I think because literary agents, their job is to they spend all their time scouting for ideas, and then they will help authors develop ideas which is good. So by the time it gets to me, it may be in really good shape. That’s probably about 20 to 30% of the projects that I acquire. Then the rest is through personal connections, authors will contact me because they’ve worked with other authors that always works well. Then, in that case, I’m helping them develop their ideas very early on in the process. So that can be good, because I know the business market really well, so I can help them in a way that perhaps some literary agents can’t. And then I also look for authors. I usually come up with ideas that I want someone to write about, and then I’ll look for authors. I’ll ask colleagues, I’ll ask my other authors, if they can suggest authors who could write authoritatively on that topic. There’s all different ways that authors come to me.

Kris Safarova  14:00

Kevin, and once you start working with an author, what on average, the process looks like?

Kevin Evers  14:04

So the proposal stage can take three to six months. And then once we sign a contract, the book writing process is a pretty long process. So usually authors have a year or so to write the book or write a draft of the book, and then once I receive a draft, that’s usually a four to six month process of revision. I’ll read the manuscript multiple times, I’ll do a lot of edits, give a lot of feedback, then the author has a chance to respond to that feedback and those revisions. And sometimes it’s a more dynamic process. For some authors, they don’t send me a manuscript a year into writing, they’ll they’ll send me material as they go along. So every couple months, they’re sending me material. I’m having phone calls. It’s a pretty collaborative process, and then from there, it takes about four to six months to get the book copy edited page. Proofs printed and then finally published. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a long process when, if you’re an editor for a magazine, you’re developing relationships, but those tend to be fast prints. They’re relationships that are very intense, and then they go away. But the book process is much longer, and the relationships are much longer and hopefully deeper as a result, of course.

Kris Safarova  15:27

And you probably manage multiple projects at the same time. How many projects on average do you manage?

Kevin Evers  15:34

Yeah, it can depend anywhere from six to eight projects at one time. That doesn’t mean I’m deeply editing six day projects at a time. It’s usually maybe two or three. So I may deal with a project, I may be signing a project, one project and another project may be going to the copy editor, while three other projects, I may be deep into editing. So I’m definitely juggling a lot of projects at once, but it’s totally manageable.

Kris Safarova  16:02

Totally manageable for someone who’s organized, reliable, accountable.

Kevin Evers  16:07

Yeah. Editors need to be project managers too.

Kris Safarova  16:11

Yes, a lot to keep track of what are the parts of editing process that you really enjoy, and what are the parts that are really challenging.

Kevin Evers  16:18

I really enjoy phone calls with authors. I like talking to them about their ideas and their vision and where they want to take a manuscript. I love authors who are highly collaborative. Those are really richly rewarding relationships. Not all authors are like that. You know, it’s every author is different, but I really love authors who want a co collaborator, that really want me to get into the weeds and really help them make the manuscript better. The things I don’t like. Sometimes manuscripts can be difficult. Like I said, writing is really hard. Manuscripts come in all different shapes and sizes. They all have different levels of quality. That’s just the way writing is. And it can be hard sometimes to if you have a manuscript where the vision isn’t quite clear and it seems like there’s a lot of problems that can be difficult, but what I’ve learned is sometimes you just need to read it a few times. Take a step back, and instead of figuring out the 20 to 30 problems that you see, it’s about finding that one big problem. If you could find that one big problem, and it takes a long time to figure that out. Usually all those other problems just fall under that one problem. And if you can solve for that one big problem, everything tends to take care of itself, but it can be. It could be a long road to get to that one big problem, and it’s just like any creative process, you can pull your hair out. You’re thinking about it all the time. You can’t quite figure out what it is, but then once you do, it’s that eureka moment. I figured it out. So that can be really rewarding, but getting to that process can be frustrating at times.

Kris Safarova  18:12

So let’s talk about your book. Was this the first book you published?

Kevin Evers  18:16

Yeah, I bet on the other side of the process, I knew how torture it was so I’m a masochist. I guess I just I wanted to torture myself, to finally, to write a book, to really learn how how difficult it is.

Kris Safarova  18:29

Do you remember that moment when you decided to write a book and the moment when you decided to write this specific book?

Kevin Evers  18:35

For sure. So I’ve always wanted to write a book. That’s always been my goal. Before I was an editor, I thought I’d write a book with this book. I didn’t set out to write it myself. I came up with the idea as an editor, I was going to commission someone else to write it. I talked to a few people, and they seemed like they could do it, but the more and more I researched swift and the more and more, the idea came to fruition. In my mind, I had such a clear idea for what the book needed to be that it felt like it’d be malpractice to pass it off to someone else, and that’s all. I was talking about. It all the time, and one day, my colleague, who ended up being my editor on this book, said he just stopped me mid stories, like, why don’t you just write it yourself? I was like, I don’t I don’t know. Then I went home that night, did the same thing. I was talking my wife’s ear off, and she stopped me and said, you should just do it yourself. And I Okay, maybe I’m not so sure. And then I woke up the next morning, and that was the first thing I thought of. I was like, You know what? I just need to do this myself.

Kris Safarova  19:46

And what happens next, right in your first book, can you tell us about the process, the experience, the journey?

Kevin Evers  19:52

My process is very similar to what other authors are. I work for HBR, and I’m doing the book for HBR, but I had to go through the same process. So I wrote a proposal, and had to convince the powers that be that this was a good idea, that was a good use of my time, and that Taylor Swift, the female superstar, was worthy of the HBR treatment. And that was that took about six months to get the proposal off the ground, to get it to a place where I really thought that it could convince other people that this was a good idea. And then once the proposal was done, it took me about a year or so to write the book, which is fast, but we felt like Swift was such a huge phenomenon and the Aristotle was going on at the same time that it would behoove us to get the book out as quickly as possible. But I mean, a year is a still substantial amount of time. But like I said, it usually takes about 18 months to get a final draft, and we cut that down by about six to eight months.

Kris Safarova  21:06

Incredible. Were there any key lessons that you felt like you learned from being an editor that you could apply when you were writing your own book?

Kevin Evers  21:15

I have so much empathy for my authors. I’ve always had so much empathy for my authors, I know how hard writing is, and I always try to be their editor. I always try to be their psychologist. I always try to be their friend. I always try to help them through their their troubles and their emotions when it comes to writing a book. And I have to say, after writing the book, I have even more empathy, because it is so hard. I know what I’m doing, and it was really, really, really hard. It’s writing a book. It seems like everyone has this big goal. Not everyone, but a lot of people, have a goal of writing a book. And I think they have that goal, because they know how hard it is. It’s really hard to keep so many ideas straight in your head, and then once you have a draft done, you know, once you start seeing problems, it takes a long time to one figure out those problems, but then to fix those problems, because books are sprawling, they’re 300 pages long. And yeah, so I went into the project as an editor. The one thing I knew that I needed is an airtight structure. The good thing about Taylor Swift is she separates all our albums into eras. So the structure was pretty easy to follow. I had a chronological structure. Every part of the book follows an album of her career, and that really helped, because I’ve had other projects as an editor where I said, Okay, we’ll discover what this book is as we go through the process. But I knew, because we were moving at a decent clip, that I really needed that structure, and it was really going to help me organize the book, but also organize my thoughts. Because the goal of the book was to take business concepts, business lessons, stuff that HBr does really well, and apply them to Swift’s decisions and pivotal moments in her career to give more context to what she was doing. But there are so many of those. So if I didn’t have that tight structure, the book would have been too sprawling. There would have been way too many ideas, and it would have been hard to follow. So as an editor, I knew as a writer, I really, really needed a great structure.

Kris Safarova  23:46

Did you have a specific schedule you were following in writing this book? So for example, writing 15 in the morning or dedicating an hour a day.

Kevin Evers  23:54

All the time. I just wrote all the time. I still had my day job, so I had to balance that as well. So in the mornings, at night, anytime I could, during lunch, anytime I had free time, I was writing, which wasn’t an ideal schedule. It was, it was really tough to balance both of them at the same time, but especially in the business space, that’s what a lot of authors have to do. Authors don’t really take sabbaticals to write their books. Some do, but for the most part, they’re balancing their day job with their with their writing. So that’s another source of empathy i i now have for my authors. I know how difficult it is to balance everything.

Kris Safarova  24:35

And it’s good that your wife gave you the idea as well in the beginning, so she co-created this situation.

Kevin Evers  24:41

For sure. I cannot thank her enough for being so great with this book. She was really the one that said you knew to you need to do this. I know it’s going to be really hard. It’s going to be really hard for me. It’s going to be really hard for the family. I have two young kids, but we persevered. We made it through, and I think everyone’s happy now that the book’s about to be released.

Kris Safarova  25:06

It makes the world of difference to have a spouse that will give you a good advice and support you.

Kevin Evers  25:11

And she was, she was a great reader, too. She would read early material of the book, and I really trust her as a reader. So that was a great resource. They have someone sitting right next to me all the time who could read a paragraph, could read an entire chapter and give me her honest feedback, but she also had great feedback too. She has such an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t, and that was she was an incredible resource.

Kris Safarova  25:41

As you were working on this book, what were some of the things that really surprised you that you uncovered?

Kevin Evers  25:46

The first thing that really surprised me was how headstrong Taylor Swift was at a very early age. I didn’t know much about her debut when she was 16 and her first album came out. I was in grad school. I was listening to Radiohead. I was annoying my friends with my hot takes about European art films. I was not listening to Taylor Swift, so I didn’t know much about her country days. And that was an eye opening experience for me, because what I learned is she had such a clear vision for who she wanted to be, the artist she wanted to be at 1314, years old, and people around her, I found many interviews of executives, Fellow songwriters, who knew her at that time, who were astonished, who had worked with other younger people, and said, I’ve never seen someone at such a young age who had such a clear vision for what you wanted to do. She wanted to write her own songs. She wanted to write songs for a teenage audience, so an audience of her peers, and she wanted to release an album as soon as possible, and that wasn’t the consensus in country music at the time. A lot of people who had way more experience than her at the time said, I think you should wait. There’s no audience for Teen Girls in country music. But she persisted, and it it worked to her advantage. But, yeah, I just, I can’t imagine being so headstrong at 13, because not only was she headstrong, she made really bold decisions as a teenager, she left a development deal with RCA Records, which at the time, was one of the biggest labels on Nashville’s Music Row, and she ended up signing with a former executive universal label group who started his own label, but he didn’t have funding, he didn’t have a name for a startup, and he didn’t have a headquarters, but he believed in her Vision, and so she went with him, and the rest is history that really ended up working out for her, but I can’t imagine making those decisions as as a teenager. I can’t imagine making those decisions now, those had to be really hard, but her clear vision really encouraged her to make those bold decisions that ended up working well for her in her career.

Kris Safarova  28:23

Can you share with us another one or two stories of something she have done that really made a big difference earlier on in her career?

Kevin Evers  28:32

Yeah, one of the things that she did is she was she came up as a country artist. She was positioned as a country artist. She was her first album was a slow burn, but ended up being a big hit on country radio. She became a country sensation, but with her second album, she adopted a classic business strategy, an adjacency strategy. She was firmly rooted in country, but then she started to move a little bit into the pop world, into the more mainstream music world, and she she didn’t abandon her country roots. At the time, she was country first. Her and her team made sure that they service country radio, and everything that they did it was country first. They really made sure that they did not alienate country fans. So they took a very deliberate move into pop music. It was very slow, but it ended up working out. She I called you can have your cake and eat it too, strategy where she really focused on country, but by also focusing on pop, she really catapulted her popularity. She was she was with her second album that was her huge smash hit. Her first album did well, but her second album did extremely well, and I think it’s in large part due to that adjacency strategy. No.

Kris Safarova  30:00

Are there any biggest strategic missteps that she have made, and how was she able to recover from them?

Kevin Evers  30:07

Her biggest strategic misstep was coming too late to streaming. So in 2014 she released her big pop album, 1989 this was the album where she all the banjos are gone. All the mandolins are gone. They replaced with 80 sounding synthesizers. And it was a big risk, because it wasn’t just about sound. It was about markets. Like I said, she cornered both the pop market and the country market, but by going full on pop the country market was gone. She was prioritizing pop music and streaming was a major becoming a major force in 2014 but she had a major spat, public spat with Spotify because she did not agree with their royalty rates, so she pulled all of her music from Spotify. She was the only artist who could do that, because at the time, she could sell physical albums. She was really the only artist who could still sell millions of units of physical albums, and those were more economically viable than stream. She was going to make much more money on selling physical albums than she would from getting streams. The problem with that approach, and it was the right approach in 2014 but by 2019 streaming had grown close to 700% it’s user base, so she couldn’t ignore streaming anymore. But the problem is, she was kind of caught flat footed, because she had this premium position for so long, she didn’t really have the strategies to deal with streaming. And so that was, I don’t know if I’d call it a strategic misstep, but I’d say she fell into a trap that a lot of great companies and great brands fall into. It’s called premium position captivity. And you see major giants right now, like Disney, ESPN, are really struggling to figure out streaming right now, and Swift was the same way. So when she released her lover album, this was in 2019 she took a streaming first approach, or tried to, but the album was way too long. It you could tell that she was trying to release more songs so she’d get her streaming numbers up, but the album, because of that was disjointed, and it didn’t really work as well. And she was still trying to really have a physical or she was trying to push as many physical units as possible. And that album, compared to everyone else, that album, did well, but compared to Taylor Swift, that album didn’t do didn’t do that well, it was one of her least successful albums at the time. So that was, that was a situation that she found herself in, because, you know, she was the victim of her own success, in a sense, and it wasn’t until her next album where she really pivoted to really change her strategy to work for streaming, and once she did, her popularity skyrocketed.

Kris Safarova  33:27

Did you observe anything different in how she approaches decision making versus how most people do?

Kevin Evers  33:32

I’d say her decision making is very instinctual. Other people make instinctual decisions as well. I don’t know if that sets her apart from anyone else, but that did surprise me. She’s not making decisions in corporate boardrooms, and you know, she’s not thinking of, okay, how do I strategize my way out of this? It seems like a lot of her decisions are based on her personal preferences as an artist, her move to pop music, for example, her full on move to pop music was a case in point. She felt like her musical tastes were changing. She was in her mid 20s at the time, and that was the music she was gravitating toward, so she made the move to pop music. Now the strategy came later, because if you think about it, her move to pop music, you could argue, was a very risky and bad decision, because at the time, pop music and country combined to they’re about 25% of the total music market. Well, if she went full on pop, she was potentially losing about 12 to 13% of that which country represented. But again, she has a personal brand, and she felt like and she’s voiced this. That my job is to make the best product that I can, and since my personal tastes are changing, this is the direction I have to move in. But she’s so good at communicating those changes to her fans. She did such a good job of that, especially around this time, that her fans were willing to go along with it. So that was a major, bold, risky decision that she made, and it was really based on her own evolution as an artist. I think if she was a strategy first type of thinker, I’m not sure she would have made such a bold move.

Kris Safarova  35:40

So she doesn’t betray herself. She’s doing what she feels is best, most authentic to her, aligned with who she is, for sure, for someone reading the book, a leader within a life company, what are the key lessons you want them to take away?

Kevin Evers  35:57

There’s a few lessons. The first thing I’ll say is swift at this point in her career, has earned the reputation as a reinventor. She’s similar to David Bowie at this point in her career, she constantly changes, but she earned that the first three albums of her career were all about establishing trust and consistency, she didn’t go in and start changing things very radically. She really balanced changing enough so her fans, her customers, felt like they were getting something new, but not changing so much that she alienated them. So I really think that set the foundation for the rest of her career. She had built that trust and consistency. But one of the most important things to learn from Taylor Swift is she devotes as much time to her fans as she does her product, her songs. She is incredibly fan obsessed. She’s customer obsessed. And Jeff Bezos had a great quote in one of his shareholder letters, and I’ll paraphrase this, but he said, our customers are delightfully dissatisfied. They may tell us that they love our products, that they love what we do, but deep down, customers always want more, and it’s our job to delight them in new ways. And that statement fits swift to a T. It doesn’t matter how popular she is, it doesn’t matter how successful she is. She always puts her fans first, and she always finds new ways to surprise them and delight them. For example, the ARIS tour, she could have played two hours, two and a half hours. She could have played a greatest hit show, and her fans would have loved it, but she didn’t. She played three and a half hours. Set list was over 40 songs, and she devoted a mini set to every album of her career except her debut. Now that had to come at physical and mental cost for her, her band, her crew, but she did it anyway. She set a high expectation, and then she exceeded that high expectation. I think that’s one of the most important lessons to take from her career, because it’s really how she builds these fan relationships, but it’s also why her fans stick around for so long.

Kris Safarova  38:38

Let’s build on this a little bit. What do you think are the key branding principles that she follows that make your marketing so effective, building on what we already covered.

Kevin Evers  38:48

So what makes her marketing most effective? One thing I’ll say about Taylor is she is in full control of what she does. She doesn’t, of course, she has a team around her, but she doesn’t outsource her marketing to other people. Her marketing from very early on in her career was about building strong relationships, and I think that’s critical. She has always understood that she herself is just as important as her music and her fans job to be done. What her fans are hiring her to do is to validate their emotions and to validate their experiences, and she’s always understood that she needs to really, really foster and develop those relationships.

Kris Safarova  39:49

Can you tell us more about how she develops those relationships with friends?

Kevin Evers  39:54

For sure. So one of the things that she does is she uses social media. To her advantage. So her rise always coincided. Her rise as a artist coincided with the rise of social media. She’s not successful because of social media, but she’s successful because of how she’s used those tools to her advantage. And a big thing that she does is her fan community resembles True Crime communities on social media, she has a way of imbuing everything that she does with some sort of meaning. So it’s interesting, especially at this point in her career, is she’s not as extremely online as she used to be, but that means that everything that she does is analyzed and scrutinized. So every time she’s photographed by paparazzi, fans are wondering, Well, why is she wearing that dress? That must mean something every time she says something on social media or capitalizes a word or mentions a number, her fans are analyzing that. Well, what does that mean? And Taylor has taught her fans to do this. This is something she’s been doing her entire career. It started with capitalizing random words in her liner notes to dropping easter eggs and her songs. And it’s it’s interesting because it increases engagement, and her fans never sleep. The the Swifty fandom is 24/7, there’s so much speculation going on on Tiktok, and it’s not just about random letters or things that she’s wearing. Her fans are analyzing her lyrics. They’re doing deep dives into her songs. She’s always understood that her fans can be co creators in the process, that they can be co creators in her mythology, and she’s always encouraged that. And this is something that the Grateful Dead bit did back in the 1960s they let fans record shows and share shows. But of course, this all scaled to absurd heights with the internet, and Swift has been a trailblazer in engaging her fans on the internet.

Kris Safarova  42:28

Can you tell us more about how did she taught fans that they need to look for Easter eggs and so on.

Kevin Evers  42:36

So this started pretty early on in her career, around her third album, maybe even her second album, like, I’m not, I can’t quite remember where it started, but she would capitalize. She would put hidden, hidden messages in the liner notes. So she would, she would capitalize words, and sometimes they would spell out a boy’s name that the song was about. So then fans could go online and they could figure out who, who that person was, and they could speculate and do things like that. So it started off very small, but now at this point, it’s it’s reached a level where it doesn’t matter what she does, even if she’s not trying to do it, fans are going to read something into it.

Kris Safarova  43:16

So something that celebrities often seem to not like, a huge interest in person’s personal life or not, like once they experience it a little bit and becomes too much. She was capitalizing on it. She was embracing it.

Kevin Evers  43:32

Yeah. What fan girl culture? If we could call it. Fan girl culture has historically been seen as vapid or unserious and swift, has treated it as valuable, and that’s a big reason for her success. She understands how her fans operate. She understands what her fans want, while other bands or artists may have shied away from that sort of thing. She really leans into it and think back to the Beatles. The term Beatlemania has mania in it. It wasn’t a term of endearment, and a lot of critics at the time compared Beatlemania to a contagion, a virus that spread across teenage girls. We’ve all seen the videos that the teenage girls yelling and screaming, and they seem like they don’t have control. And some people didn’t think that it was intellectual enough, it wasn’t serious enough. But in fact, there’s been a lot of research done on this that, in fact, those fans are hyper engaged. They’re very smart, and they know a lot about the music, and Taylor Swift has really taken advantage of this, because her fans, again, are co creators in her process, Taylor Swift understands that she’s not self made. Superstars are created by fans, and so a lot of her strategies are about the fans, about engaging. Fans and about scaling that fan behavior and increasing engagement, which then spreads on social media.

Kris Safarova  45:06

Did you learn anything about how she manages herself, manages her life, to be able to be this put together person who is able to be so effective in the world?

Kevin Evers  45:16

I wish I knew, because we can all learn a lot from Taylor Swift. I didn’t learn any life hacks or any tidbits in regard to that. I mean, the only thing I’ll say is she, she’s gone through a lot of controversy, she’s gone through a lot of challenges, but she never stops making music. She’s not the type of artist who goes away for four to five years every two years, and now at a faster clip, she’s making music. She always returns to her art. She loves songwriting, and that’s one thing we could learn. We could definitely learn from her that it doesn’t matter what’s going on if you’re a creative person, just make art. Just keep creating, and things will work out.

Kris Safarova  46:01

Where do you think her business empire will evolve to in the next decade or two?

Kevin Evers  46:05

That’s the big question right now, if our Taylor Swift and I walked off stage during my last eras tour show, I would be exhilarated, but when I thought of what’s next, I think that’d be a daunting question to ask, because the eras tour was 20 years in the making. It was the culmination of the last two decades of her career, and it grossed over $2 billion it was the highest grossing tour of all time, and in 2024 Taylor Swift, according to hits Daily Double, represented 2% of the music business just Taylor, and that’s just her sales and streams. That doesn’t include the errors to our box office and it doesn’t include merchandising. If it did, that number would be much higher. She is at a level of popularity that we haven’t seen in a very, very long time. But I think just given her, given her past experience, I don’t think she goes away. I don’t think she wilts from the challenge. I think she goes big, and I think she will continue over the next decade. It seems impossible, but it would not surprise me if she grew her popularity, because the fundamentals of her business are so strong, she will continue to be customer obsessed. She will continue to try to grow and adapt as an artist, and I can see her growing her popularity and continuing to be the icon that she is.

Kris Safarova  47:49

Kevin, I’m glad that you decided to write this book, because I see how much you care about bringing the like lessons to the leaders. Thank you so much for everything you shared. Where can our listeners learn more about you? Buy your book? anything you want to share?

Kevin Evers  48:02

You can go to nothinglikethisbook.com to learn more, and the book is available wherever books are sold. It comes out April 8, and it’s always good to shop local, but you can also get the book on Amazon and other major retailers as well. Thank you so much.

Kris Safarova  48:22

Kevin, thank you again, so much for being here. This is fun. Our guest today again has been Kevin Evers. Check out his book There’s Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. And our podcast sponsor today is strategytraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download we prepared for you, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-winning resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. It shows you a very good template that you can use regardless if you are applying for consulting or in other space, and also regardless of your seniority level, it’s a very, very good template to follow, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF. And you can also get a free copy of our book, Nine Leaders in Action at firmsconsulting.com/gift. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.