Business Lessons from Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus & Kendall Jenner: Pop Culture Meets Marketing

If you guys have been here for a while and you know a little bit of my story, you'll know that in 2018 I was fired from my dream job. And then in 2019, I went back to teaching English in Spain and I was earning less than $15,000 a year. And at that point I had no prior experience in entrepreneurship, but I knew that I wanted freedom and I had a lot of wisdom to share and I just wanted to build something of my own. So in 2020, I built a 6-figure wellness education business from my literal bedroom. We lived in a 1-bedroom apartment in Madrid at the time, and I bought this little desk on Amazon and I shoved it in the corner under the window. And that is where I built my entire business. And then by 2022, I had helped hundreds of women change their lives in so many different ways. And last year in 2023, my brand crossed 7 figures in gross revenue and the podcast was was, you know, continuing to spread like wildfire and our community here was growing so much to millions of listeners. And at the same time, my clients were scaling and having success, $20,000 months, $50,000 months, $100,000 months. And so it's been, it's been quite a journey over the past 4 years and I've really learned a lot. I feel like I got put into this like pressure chamber and I just like learned so much about entrepreneurship and business and personal branding in such a short amount of time. And so I'm really excited that this Sunday on March 10th, I'm gonna be hosting a free masterclass to teach you some of the top growth codes that I have learned. So this free class is gonna be a mix of the most game-changing principles and strategic moves that me and my clients have used to scale our businesses to 6 and 7 figures. It's probably gonna be about a 2-hour class. And we're gonna talk about the skills that you need to become successful, what you need to know before creating any product or service, how to be seen as a leader in this industry, how to convert your followers into clients, the honest truth about scaling to 7 figures, the secret to sales magnetism. And we're also gonna do a guided visualization experience and some EFT tapping to help you break through any limiting beliefs or fears that might be holding you back and start to input some more powerful positive beliefs deep into your subconscious mind so that you succeed faster. And are you ready for the craziest part? This is what I love so much because I don't really see anybody else doing stuff like this, so that makes me wanna do it even more. So not only are you gonna get this entire masterclass experience for free and have so many notes and tangible takeaways, but also when you come to the class, you are gonna find out how you can access 10 days of free business coaching with me in a secret chat. You're gonna be able to get your personal questions answered, and we're gonna be chatting, voice noting in this secret group for 10 full days. I know I've gone rogue, but I'm really lit up about this. I'm so excited. I can't wait to give away massive value in this experience. If you can't come live, a replay recording will be available. So sign up. There are hundreds of you already signed up for this experience. I spent the entire weekend writing all of your names on my office windows in window marker. If you follow on Instagram, you have seen in stories, there's hundreds of your names just like drawn all over my office windows, and I can't wait to add yours. So if you want to come, if you want to join us, click the link in the show notes below, and I will see you there Sunday, March 10th, 3:00 PM. Growth Codes. Welcome to the Makeshift Happen podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Daly, entrepreneur, life coach, and your no BS bestie here to bring you all things mindset manifestation, and personal development. This podcast is designed to help you expand your mind and uplevel your life. So turn the volume up and roll the windows down if you're coming along for the ride. Let's go make shift happen. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. Okay. Wow. I am like obsessed with this episode already and it hasn't even started. But you guys know when you love personal development or business, you kind of start to look at the whole world through that lens. It's why I can't watch reality TV shows like Love Is Blind or The Bachelor. Without psychoanalyzing every single person on the show and identifying the inner work that they likely need to be doing. And it's also why I can't even watch something like the Grammys without seeing the businesses behind these artists, or I can't consume like a celebrity brand's Instagram post without unpacking the marketing genius that went into it. So anyways, this episode is going to be just that. It's basically where pop culture meets marketing. In today's episode, we're going to be taking business lessons from women like Miley Cyrus, Kendall Jenner, and of course, the mastermind herself and Time magazine's most recent Person of the Year, Taylor Swift. In this episode, we're going to talk about why losing the rights to her masters was probably the best thing that ever happened to Taylor Swift. We're going to talk about how to create a movement and deeper intimacy with your audience. Staying relevant online without it feeling like a burden to show up every day. The difference between manifesting and being manifested and adopting this new way of creating content and approaching your goals. Redefining success and the magic that happens when you surrender. Knowing where and with who your service is going to be most highly valued and documenting versus creating and the absolute marketing mastery that comes with good storytelling. And we're gonna do it all through the lens of pop culture, celebrities, and powerful women. So if this sounds like something that you're interested in, stick around. You're gonna enjoy this episode. Let's dive in. All right, we're gonna start with the icon, the person of the year, Taylor Swift. Everyone's talking about her, and if you're sick of it, grow up, get a life. Don't need to listen to this episode, whatever your problem is with Taylor Swift. We don't need to hear about it, okay? If you're sick of seeing her on your Instagram feed, stories, wherever, all over the place, I hate to tell you, but it's not her fault, right? So we're gonna talk about what's actually happening and what she's been doing right for the past couple of years. So we kind of have to rewind a little bit and talk about the time in June of 2019 when her masters were acquired by Scooter Braun. So if you are a Swiftie, you likely know this story, and if not, we'll just keep it short and sweet. And summarize it to the main points. Essentially, back in June 2019, Taylor's masters, a.k.a. the rights to her music, were acquired by Scooter Braun when he became the new owner of Taylor's former label. So she was no longer working with this label, but it was her former label known as Big Machine Records. And Scooter came in and he purchased that label for a cool $330 million. Casual. And along with that, in that sale included the masters, aka the rights to Taylor's first 6 albums, I believe it was. Now, a lot of musicians don't own the rights to their masters, so it's not that weird of a situation, although it was a little bit unique because of how that deal went down. And there's, you know, talk of how that was not disclosed to Taylor. She was not involved, she was not made aware, and it was all kind of done behind her back from a label that she signed with when she was 15 and didn't have the, you know, full knowledge to be able to know what she was signing into. And it was a little bit slimy the way that they did things, and they kind of excluded her from the negotiations and whatever else, right? And, and obviously people know that Taylor Swift is a money pit. She is a gold mine. So if you can own her work and her art, you're going to be rich, and everybody knows that. And so they try to take advantage of that. The other thing that's unique about Taylor Swift is that she writes all of her own music. So a lot of other musicians, you know, they purchase songs from songwriters and things like that. Taylor Swift's music is completely unique and it's a storybook of her life and her memories and her relationships. And so it was a lot more personal to her to— for her to want to own those masters and have the rights to that music. The other thing about this is that if you don't own the rights to your masters, then when people use your music, you don't actually get paid for it. So That's the whole debacle in this. If you're like, why does it matter? Who cares? So that's like the basics. So who is Scooter Braun? Scooter Braun has managed so many famous artists, including Justin Bieber. He's worked with Kanye West, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, J Balvin, and a lot of others. So he is very wealthy, very famous in the music space. He actually appears quite a lot on Justin Bieber's documentary when he did that, like YouTube docu-series back in 2020, I think is when it was released. It's called Seasons. It's a bunch of different little like episodes. They're, they're long videos on YouTube. It's a docu-series, but I think it's only available on YouTube. It's actually really good. So if you're curious about like the behind the scenes of Justin Bieber's life, his health issues, all of that stuff that's kind of been going on in the lead up to him taking a step back from music and kind of being out of the public eye in the recent years, You'll find a lot of that information in Seasons. It also covers like his relationship with Hailey and their wedding and all kinds of stuff. But anyway, you'll see Scooter Braun appear in that docuseries quite a lot because he was a big part of Justin's journey as he was managing him through those formative years and the height of his fame, essentially. So we're in 2019, right? Scooter comes in, he acquires this Big Machine Records label and along with it, the masters to Taylor's first 6 albums. So obviously that deal didn't feel good. Didn't sit right with Taylor. A lot of people were upset about this, and it really started a larger conversation about women in the music industry, especially like owning their work and not being walked all over by the men who have the power and the money and all of that. And what I didn't know about this story was that Kelly Clarkson actually tweeted. She tweeted at Taylor and she said, just a thought, you should go in and rerecord all of the songs that you don't own the masters on. Exactly how you did them before, but put brand new art and some kind of incentive so fans will no longer buy the old versions. I would buy all of the new versions just to prove a point. So I didn't know that this idea originated from this tweet from Kelly Clarkson. And later on in an interview on a late night show, Kelly actually said she got this idea from Reba McEntire because that was something that she did. She went in, she rerecorded all of her music because she really wanted to own the rights to her masters. So anyway, that sparks the idea. Taylor actually goes and does this, and that's what started the whole Taylor's Version. If you see her music and you see the parentheses Taylor's Version, that means it's the rerecorded version that she now owns, that she gets paid for when people stream, download, buy, whatever. So between the years of 2021 and 2023, Taylor starts rereleasing all of her original music. She hasn't finished all— she hasn't released all of them yet, but she starts this process of rereleasing all of her original albums to gain back the ownership of it. And at the same time, she's also simultaneously writing new music and releasing new albums. So this constant stream of new music, the re-releases and the new releases together, made her not only a record-breaking, chart-topping artist, but it really kept her highly relevant and top of mind for a continuous period of time. Like, not many other artists are dropping a new album every year or multiple in one year. And so this era for Taylor Swift was huge. And I think that's really why we're seeing her at the height of her fame right now, is because there was just so much new music. And it wasn't all necessarily brand new, but it was those re-releases mixed with some new albums like Midnights. Um, and so there was just like this constant stream of content coming from Taylor Swift during this like 3 to 4 year period that we have been in. And then of course, in 2023, she starts performing around the world on her Eras Tour and dating Travis Kelce, which makes her even more relevant and more talked about. And then the cherry on top of all of this is that Disney ends up paying her $75 million for the streaming rights to the Eras Tour movie so that they can stream that movie, uh, uniquely on their platform. Wow. Okay. This has been a journey for the past couple of years with Taylor Swift, and we're gonna unpack some of the lessons that we can learn from her. I think one of the biggest lessons that doesn't have as much to do with this, like, most recent era, but just her as a person and how she's always approached fame, is that we have to really create intimacy with our fans and with our audience. This is something that Taylor Swift does so well. She creates this level of intimacy with her fans that no other artist has ever achieved because she really, like, pours so much of her personal life and stories into her music, and her fans then feel like they have been doing life with her over the past couple of years, or even that they've grown up together alongside of her. They've processed heartbreak and betrayal, and they've gone through friendship challenges, and she writes about those things. And they've also— she's felt exiled, and people go through that, and they, they feel that and re-experience it through her, her writing. And they have fallen in love and out of love right alongside her. Like, a lot of Taylor's fans are of my age group where she became famous when we were teens and now we are grown women, adults, and we've went through that entire growth process and that maturing process and the chaos of, of your twenties. And we all lived that together with Taylor and her music kind of illustrated that whole journey and like what the ride that like life takes you on in that time period. And she really shares like the depths of her heart and her real perspectives. I mean, she even like gets political in some senses. And I think you'll see this a lot in the Miss Americana documentary that she did. You can watch it, I think, on Netflix. But in that documentary, you'll see how she's in this battle of everyone telling her not to share the political views, like not to go that direction. Don't say anything, just stay quiet, like don't rock the boat. You don't want lose out on the fans and the audience that you have because you decide to take a stand for something, because politics is extremely polarizing. But she's not afraid to be polarizing, and she went full force into the politics, and she's unapologetically herself and unafraid to stand in the truth of what she believes in, which, as you know if you listen to the show, is the formula for massive success, fulfillment, and magnetism. That is highly magnetic, right? Polarize, to magnetize. Be who you are. Say what you want. Live your truth. Tell your story. That is the thing that's always going to have that really, really intense magnetic pull and draw people towards you. And so she's really, really good at that. And then through a business lens, you know, Gary Vee talks about this. He calls it the Taylor Swift effect. He posted about this a couple of years ago, and I just recently reshared this video on my Instagram. And I'm just going to share the clip with you guys so that you can hear it in GaryVee's words, because I think it's great.

Taylor Swift rule. So I think Taylor Swift hacked culture. What Taylor Swift's very good at is she knows that when people tweet her and say, Taylor, come to my wedding and sing me a song, she actually does it. Here's why she does it. The 75-minute allocation of her time to do something like that is not ROI positive for Taylor based on what she makes for her time. However, the amplification of doing something that makes no sense on paper is where she gets all her value. So I get yelled at by all my smartest CEO friends, the most fancy gals and guys on earth, for still answering all these tweets and emails and replying one by one on Snapchat. But I know that depth is far more interesting than width in a world where the width has just become completely obnoxiously loud and impossible to break through. You scale the unscalable if you want to break through the noise today.

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Documenting your day and hoping it builds trust, posting look-at-me content and calling it authority, sharing client wins as soon as they drop in instead of strategically weaving them into a story selling sequence designed to drive demand and convert sales. We both know that you're not here to learn how to show up more. You're here because you know your content could be converting faster and more effectively. Sold Out Stories is gonna give you 5 high converting story selling frameworks built specifically for premium buyer psychology. Inside, you'll get over 6 hours of deep dive video trainings, real IG story breakdowns, and live walkthroughs that show you exactly how to elevate your slides. From authority building all the way to offer flow in less than 10 slides. My clients have already been using these frameworks to pull 5-figure sales days while posting less. One client generated 14 premium leads from a single story sequence. Another sold out her event in under 6 hours with just 8 strategic story slides. No sales calls, no paid ads, just the right frameworks. You'll walk away knowing how to sequence for desire, transition into your offer seamlessly, and sell daily without ever feeling salesy. Easily. You already know your offer's incredible, so now it's just time for your stories to sell it like it is. Grab Sold Out Stories today and turn 10 slides or less into your highest converting content. Let's make your next story your most profitable one yet. Click the link in the show notes below and I'll see you inside. Love that you scale the unscalable. So Gary Vee's talking about going deep rather than trying to go wide. And so exactly as I just said, she shares like the depth. Of her heart and her perspectives. And what that looks like also is how ride or die she has been for her fandom since the beginning. She is the person that actually shows up to people's weddings, that goes to their engagement parties, that goes to their showers, that shows up and, and sings a song and sends them things in the mail, or goes out of her way to find out where they live and order them a private car to come to one of her meet and greets, or she figures out who her, like, extreme fans are and she brings them up to the edge of the stage at her concerts or gives them the hat in the Eras Tour. Like, there's this level of depth and it's so personal with a fandom that feels like it would be impossible to make it personal because it is so fucking huge, right? And so that's the cool thing that we can learn from Taylor Swift is like, it's possible to create intimacy No matter how big or wide your audience is. And as Gary was talking about, sometimes that allocation of time seems like it doesn't make sense, but there is this ROI of really going deep with people and being available and responding and showing that love and giving back, right? And so it doesn't mean that you need to answer every single DM or you need to start showing up at your clients' weddings, right? But there's other ways that we can build genuine relationships and start to go deep with our people, because ultimately one of the best ways that you're going to grow your business, your empire, whatever it is, is through reputation and through word of mouth. And when one person has an incredible experience with you, they're going to talk about you. They're going to share it with someone else. They're going to be like, she's the fucking best. Like, I can't believe she did this for me. Oh my God, there was this extra detail. She really thought about everything. And that is so, so important to brand. Brand is the taste that you leave in people's mouths after they have worked with you or come into contact with you or experienced a piece of your work, your art, your content, whatever it is. Brand is that lasting taste that you leave in people's mouth. And what do you want that to be, right? So how are you building genuine relationships with your people? Are you replying to DMs? Are you showing up consistently on social media? Are you providing value? Are you sharing some behind the scenes, like sharing your heart, sharing your life? Are you letting people into your life maybe through your long-form content, like on a podcast or in your vlogs? Are you facilitating opportunities for people to meet and connect with you live? And this could be virtual or it could be in person. Like, I think free workshops, free masterclasses, live experiences online can count, but also things like in-person meetups. Something I loved was this past summer when I went to London. I realized that there was quite a few girls in my community that live in the area, and I was like, we have time, why not? Let's just go meet at this cool vibey place. And it wasn't an event of any sorts or anything that I needed to plan or prepare for, but it was just like, I want to meet you guys. Like, I just want to talk to you. I want to hang out. Like, I want to see each other face to face. And there was no exchange of money. There was no immediate like ROI or anything for me. There was no intention in that way. But it's just like I want to go deep with people that enjoy my content, that buy my programs, that are excited about the podcast, that are interested in the work that I'm doing. And so we can all ask ourselves this really valuable question of like, are we building genuine relationships? And if not, what might we be able to do to go a little bit deeper with our people rather than always thinking about how to go wide and how to go viral and how to reach more, right? And I think what Taylor Swift has also done has really showed us the power of personal brand because she's someone that has pivoted multiple times. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But when you continue to pivot, if you have a really strong personal brand, people will always come with you. So the second lesson that we can learn from Taylor Swift, and this goes back to kind of this whole story of the journey of getting back the rights to her masters and rerecording all of her music and releasing all these albums over a 3-year period. The lesson that I'm pulling from this is like, don't be afraid to sell every day and to be omnipresent, like consistently putting work out into the world and encouraging other people to consume it is part of the gig. Don't be afraid to do that. So many people are shrinking back and thinking they can only sell X amount of times per year or per month or whatever it is. But you look at someone like Taylor in the past couple of years especially, it's been thing after thing after thing after thing, and she's not worried about people getting tired of her. And that has created this intense kind of like surge of fame and popularity because there's been that consistency, right? So what would happen to your following, your fandom, your sales, your excitement for creating if you didn't just post and ghost or look at what you're doing as like this obligation, but rather as a gift. Not only is this an energy shift, but it's also an attention shift. Taylor is at the height of her fame right now because of how consistent and present she has been for the past 4 years. I fully believe that. So take what you will from that. And let that be the permission slip to like keep talking about your stuff, put your stuff out there, get in front of people every day, all the time. It's never too much, especially when it, when it feels alive and it feels exciting for you, right? I think everybody wants to stay relevant and people worry about that, especially a lot in like the influencer market. They kind of have this constant pressure of staying relevant or having their lives look exciting because they live off of their audiences. That's what they're monetizing is the likes, the comments, the views. Like, that's where they're getting their money from. If you're a service provider, it's a little bit different, but I think we still to some extent worry about staying relevant because we obviously want people to see our content, we want people to be engaged with us, and then we want people to buy from us because that's how we make a living, right? That's how we pay our bills. So I think everybody wants to stay relevant, but a lot of times they approach it as it— as if it's like this drag of like, oh, I've got to post so that people don't forget about me. And it's like this annoying thing that they don't actually want to do, but they feel like I have to do. But the next lesson that we can learn from Taylor is to create for the sake of creating. And I'm going to reference her recent Grammys speech to really illustrate this idea of creating for the sake of creating. So in her Grammys acceptance speech, one of them, she said, for me, the award is the work. All I want to do is keep being able to do this. I love it so much. It makes me so happy. It makes me unbelievably blown away that it makes some people happy who voted for this award too. All I want to do is keep doing this. So thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to do what I love so much. And this reminded me of a quote that I read in my book the other day. It's called The Pivot Year by Brianna Weiss. And I'm going to read you this quote because it goes along with this idea so perfectly. And it says, the things you want to create also want to be created through you. What you are longing to bring into the world is also what the world is longing for you to bring it. So what this is really speaking to is the— this idea about the difference between manifesting and being manifested. And all of us are familiar with the law of attraction, and we often think about manifesting the things that we want in our lives and our businesses. And, and what that looks like is taking action and going after our goals and doing something about it and trying to become that version of ourselves that would have it. And it's like this forward-moving, almost chasing kind of motion that we can get into sometimes when we are looking forward to manifesting something, creating a result of some kind. But what this quote makes me think about is like, what if instead of you manifesting your goals and objectives and all the things that you want out of your life and your business. What if you were being manifested by the goals? What if the opportunities that exist out there in the ether are manifesting you to be the vehicle through which they are born? It's like the quote, everything I desire desires me more, and all that I am seeking is also seeking me. You know, a friend of mine, a new friend of mine in the coaching space who I'm gonna be rooming with in Egypt later this spring, which I'm really excited about. She had this reel once where she was like, I don't make vision boards, I am the vision board, or something like that. And it's this idea that she talks about often too, of being the manifestation, being the desire that other things are moving toward. And so it also kind of made me think about content, like how does this come back to business? A lot of us are frustrated with social media and Everything is always constantly changing and we're trying to figure out the algorithm and all of that stuff. But it's a good point of reflection for ourselves to ask, like, are we creating the stuff that we would want to see out there? Are you creating the writing, the art, the humor, the honesty, the imagery that you would want to consume on social media? Or are you always just kind of trying to get people to do something? So if we go back to this lesson from Taylor about creating for the sake of creating. Hey, don't forget that every month we are picking a listener of the month to win $50 in cash just for showing love to the show. All you have to do is leave an epic review of the podcast on Apple Podcasts, screenshot the review before you hit submit, and DM that screenshot to us on Instagram at Make Make Shift Happen podcast. And that's it. I want to thank you for being such a loyal listener and show my appreciation by putting a little extra cash in your pocket. I know it's super easy not to do it, but every single rating and review seriously helps the show rank higher and reach new people, so we appreciate them more than you know. We'll announce the next winner at the end of the month and slide into your DMs if it's you, so keep an eye out and good luck. Love you guys, and thanks for supporting Make Shift Happen. Victoria Ward, right? In her Grammy speech about the work being the reward. It's interesting to look at how successful she has been compared to so many other artists who are also really freaking talented, right? But especially nowadays, like in the music space, a lot of people are approaching their creations through that kind of chasing energy that we talked about, especially with the rise of TikTok and how influential TikTok has been to the music industry. And a lot of people are kind of, you know, trying to create music that they know could have something in it. It could have this little hook. It could become a TikTok dance. It has the potential to become a viral sound on social media because that is really influencing how that industry works and what pops off and what doesn't and what ultimately makes money and or doesn't. Right. But Taylor Swift has literally never created music thinking about what's going to go viral on TikTok or what other people are going to like. She has always created first for herself. She said at, at this concert the other night, she was like, this album was probably the album that I needed to write the most. And she was kind of talking about how this process of, of songwriting is something that really just helps her navigate life. It helps her cope it helps her get through all the things that she was moving through. She had a breakup with her boyfriend of 6 or 7 years. I can't remember how long they were together, but like, so essentially she's talking about how navigating all of that, like she needed to write this album, right? And so she's not approaching it through the lens of like, hmm, what do they want? What do my fans want to hear me talk about? And how can I get them to listen? And how can I get them to buy? And how can I get this to be a number 1? And how can I get my tour to be sold out? She's literally just creating what she would want to see and hear and feel, and she's allowing herself to be manifested. And it's fucking working. It's electric. It's magnetic. So what would happen if we took this little mindset shift and we applied it to our own creations and our own energy behind our work? Imagine what might shift If you could really embody this a little bit more and feel like, no, I am the manifestation, like the world is waiting for me, the opportunities want me, the universe wants me, the clients want me. I just have to be the channel. So ask yourself, are you in the energy of chasing and running after something and trying to produce a result, a.k.a. you're just creating because you're trying to get people to buy? Or are you being manifested? If the opportunities out there in the world that you're so desiring were manifesting you as the vehicle through which they could be born, if the clients were manifesting you as their next best move, what would you be putting out there? What would your energy be like? And how might that shift the content that you choose to create or the state from which you create it? Are you creating the stuff that you want to see in the world? Do you look at your content, your emails, your podcasts, your social media posts, your reels, your whatever? Do you look at that stuff and go, I would save this? Like, I would send this to myself. I love this. This makes me feel some type of way. Or is there this kind of stale outcome-driven energy behind it where it's like, I'm trying to get a result, I'm just trying to get someone to take an action, I'm trying to push someone towards an offer? What if you took a step back? And rather than going, how can I produce a result? How can I get them to say yes? And you were like, if I were being manifested, if the universe just loved me and wanted me to be this channel and wanted to send me these opportunities, what would I just naturally create and share? What would pour through me? What would I want to consume and see for me? What's interesting to me? What's expansive to me? What's expressive for me? And how can I bring that to life in my creations in a way that lights me up first? And then I share it with others and I let my energy spill over into them and hope that they feel the emotions that are baked into it with me. So this is a really long-winded, kind of windy, turny journey that we've been on for this lesson. But here's ultimately my take is like, your content should turn you on. Your content, your writing should give you goosebumps. Your videos should make you want to cry, or they should make you feel like you could punch a hole in a wall because you're so amped up. Like, obviously every piece of content isn't going to be a full-on masterpiece, but we should be creating from inspiration, not trying to force inspiration for the sake of creating. And there's so much that I have to say about this, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, but it's a really big part of my Top Tier Mastermind of getting into your creative vortex and reconnecting with that source of inspiration so that you're creating naturally from what's inspired within you and from your intuition, rather than sitting on your phone and scrolling and trying to find inspiration. And what should I post and what should I do and what should I talk about? So we want to reverse that process, right? We should be creating from inspiration, not trying to find the inspiration or force the inspiration so that we can just get something out there and create something. There's a lyric from one of the songs on the Midnights album, Sweet Nothing, and the lyric goes, on the way home, I wrote a poem. You say, what a mind. This happens all the time. So obviously this is a nod to Taylor's then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, who would often give her like compliments to her frickin infinite creative intelligence as he watched her mind kind of work and just constantly produce art in the most random and mundane of places. But again, like this lesson that we're talking about that we keep coming back to from Taylor highlights creating for the sake of creating. Create because it feels good for you, because you can't not. All right. And the last lesson from Taylor is don't be afraid to pivot. So I kind of alluded this— alluded to this earlier, but like, she is someone who really represents being able to reinvent yourself, right? She's transitioned through many different genres of music— country, pop, indie, folk. And this is because, again, she has built a strong personal brand. Her fans would literally follow her into rock music, into rap, into screamo, into whatever the fuck she wanted to do at this point, into acting, into knitting. Like, it doesn't matter what she would do, her fans would follow her there because she has built that depth, that intimacy, and a really strong personal brand. So you guys know that's my bread and butter. I'm a fan of building personal brands rather than just like businesses or companies. But again, we see this a lot, and Taylor Swift is a really great example of it. All right, next up is Miley Cyrus. We've got some business lessons that we can learn from Miley, and these are coming, uh, specifically from the Grammys and her first win and her performance and her acceptance speeches. So we're going to talk about that, but that is what inspired this part of the episode, is watching her at the Grammys and what she said and what I'm taking from that. So If you don't know, Miley won her first Grammy after over 15 years in the music industry. It's been 15, over 15 years since she started releasing music, and this was her first ever Grammy win, which a lot of people were honestly shocked by the fact that she had never won a Grammy before. But she won it, her first one, for Best Pop Solo Performance for her song Flowers. And in her acceptance speech, when she got up on stage and she was accepting her first Grammy, she was obviously really excited. But she ended up telling this story. She was like, I wasn't going to tell it, but now I kind of want to tell it. So she told this story and I'm just going to read the quote for you guys so that you can have the full context. So she said, there's this story that I want to tell that sums up this moment. So there was a little boy that all he wanted for his birthday was a butterfly. And so his parents gave him a butterfly net and he was so excited. He just went outside in the sun and started swinging and swinging, but with no luck. he sat down on the ground and he finally let go and he surrendered. And he was okay with the fact that he was not going to capture this beautiful butterfly. And right when he did that is when the butterfly came and landed on the tip of his nose. And this song, Flowers, is my butterfly. Thank you. So what we are really pulling from this is that when you let go, you open yourself up to receive. And it's just another reminder to like stop white-knuckling so hard towards the goals or the accolades or the things that you think that you need in order to feel successful. Being unattached to the outcome allows for these like heightened states of creativity to come through. And I imagine that this inspiration and the idea for flowers and the whole process that she went through to create that song and the performance and all of that was because she was in a really great place in her life and she was unattached from the outcome. And that's exactly why the butterfly, a.k.a. the Grammy, ultimately landed on her nose because she wasn't gripping and pushing and forcing and trying to make it happen. She was just happy. She was in acceptance. She was in a high vibration, right? This is why for me, like, telling myself, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to write a post, or all right, I've got to plan the next podcast episode, ready, set, go. It doesn't really work for me if I set these constraints for myself and I try to make myself get creative. I need more space than that. It has to naturally flow. And I talk about this a lot, but like, create means to bring something into existence, which means that it wasn't there before. It's going from a state of nothing to a state of something. That's what creation is, right? New creations come from nothing. So you need that space for nothingness in your life in order for the creativity to flow in. And I really believe that your best, most intuitive ideas probably aren't going to come to you when you are sitting at your laptop trying to will yourself into a creative state, right? So when you let go, when you surrender, when you create space, you open yourself up to receive magic. And also off the back of this, like, your energy matters, right? Miley is in a state of her life right now where she's gotten really healthy. She let go of toxic relationships with people that were cheating on her and not serving her. She stopped smoking weed. Like, a lot of things shifted for her where she was just clean and clarified and happy and healthy. And I really believe that our best work, our best creations, our phases of, of business and success ultimately come through when we've worked on ourselves and we've cleared that energy and we are a vibrational match for the success. So that could be another piece of this puzzle too. Like, why did it take so long? We don't know. It's a bunch of different factors, but like, I really do believe that the energy piece for her and for everyone is, is relevant and it's definitely part of that puzzle. All right. The next lesson that we can take from this is to not expect overnight success. Everyone's path is different, and it doesn't make you any less talented or any less valuable if it takes you 15 years to do what somebody else did in one, right? Plus, a lot of success metrics are also subjective, and we don't want to define our success by the numbers or the accolades alone. There's lots of other things that contribute to our overall success. And fulfillment, which kind of leads me to the next piece of this and the next lesson that really comes from the second Grammy that Miley won on the same night, which was for Record of the Year again for her song Flowers. And when she got up to accept that award, she said something really interesting. She was like, this award is amazing, but I really hope it doesn't change anything because my life was beautiful yesterday. And then she went on to say, like, please don't think that this is important. And it was just so interesting to, to like witness her like have like an acceptance speech where she was basically like, I don't need this and I loved my life and this isn't important. And so it leads to our kind of final lesson from Miley, which is to not let the accolades and the accomplishments define your success. We really have to determine what true success and fulfillment feels like for us on an individual level and then go and create that. Regardless of whether it's gonna get us on fancy stages or get us to be accepting major awards or having lots of important people clapping for us. Like, we've gotta figure out what success and fulfillment means to us and pursue that and kind of stay in our own lane. I imagine it would be challenging as an artist to move through fame and Hollywood and all of that with your blinders up of like, no, like, this is what's gonna make me happy. I don't need to be all over the billboards. I don't need to be topping the charts. I don't need to be winning all the Grammys. Like, I can be happy and fulfilled and considering myself successful even though I don't have those things, because I have these other elements of what actually makes me happy. My friend Chelsea Ryf, who you guys will know, she's been on the podcast a couple of times, she did a really recent episode on her show. Um, her show is called In My Nonexpert Opinion, and she did a recent episode called 10 Ways to Find Non-Financial Success. So if you want to kind of lean into this idea a little bit more and go further down that rabbit hole of how do I define success for me and what are some actual metrics, especially in the service-based industry or coaching, that could be, uh, identifiers for me to be like, oh yes, I've done that and that's amazing and that's a version of success and that's a version of success. Go listen to that episode. I think it's really helpful to really solidify this lesson that we learned from Miley. And finally, we have none other than the supermodel Kendall Jenner. So if you didn't know, Kendall Jenner has a tequila brand that she publicly launched in 2021. It's called 818 Tequila. 818 because it's the area code for her hometown in the San Fernando Valley. And it was actually rated the best new tequila in 2021 and has been celebrated as the best tasting tequila for the price point ahead of many other celebrity tequilas with their bottles starting at just $30. So other celebrities with major tequila brands include Nick Jonas, George Clooney, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. There's also a lot of other celebrities that have alcohol brands in general, but those are just the ones that are kind of in the tequila space. And I couldn't find the official valuation of the brand, but based on some public sales numbers and Kendall's net worth spike after introducing 818, people have their speculations around what the brand is worth. Forbes estimated that the brand sales were going to be $25 million in 2022, and there's probably some updated stats around that now that we are in moving into 2024. But regardless, like, the point being, she's built a really successful tequila brand and she's a model. So what— the thing that really sparked the idea to include her in this episode was because I saw a video on her Instagram for the college tour that she's currently doing to promote 818. And I think this is genius. I commented on the video, I was like, marketing genius. And a lot of people disagreed with me, and a lot of people also agreed with me. It has like thousands and thousands of likes, my comment, just saying marketing genius. But that sparked the inspiration to include her in this episode. So basically what she's been doing is she's been visiting some of the biggest college campuses and the most popular party universities across the US, showing up at bars and house parties and pouring shots and signing autographs partying with the students and giving away 818 merch. And they're calling it the college tour. And this isn't the first time she's done it. So she actually did an 818 college tour of the Midwest in October where she was visiting Indiana University, Ohio State University, my alma mater, go Bucks, and the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois. So she went to all of those really big sports party schools in the Midwest. And then now more recently in early February, she kind of started the second leg of the college tour where they are heading to the southern schools. And she was spotted in Gainesville, Florida, where she partied with the Gators. And then she's also been seen on campuses in Alabama, Georgia, Miami, and other places to promote the tequila. And she's even been appearing in classrooms and kind of talking about the business aspect. She was at a school in Miami with Hailey Bieber, and they both talked about their individual brands and stuff like that. So anyway, this is all part of the college tour marketing campaign for 818. And I just think this is pure genius. Genius. So some of the lessons that we can take from out of Kendall's book here with 818 is, number one, create a product that is so fucking good that it just sells itself, right? The tequila is the best tasting. It's the best value for money. And they initially launched the tequila brand anonymously and entered it into all these different, like, tasting competitions so that they could really see the quality of the product without her name attached to it and let that really speak for itself. So they entered into these tasting competitions completely anonymously. No one knew what the brand was. There was no name attached to it. There was— no one knew that it was Kendall's or that was attached to, like, the Kardashian empire in any way, and it won the best reposado tequila and best añejo tequila. So eventually, once Kendall was ready to like reveal publicly the brand and that it was her behind it and bring it to the public, she posted their scorecard from the Ultimate Spirits Challenge competition that they were in. And according to the judge, the judge had said it is greatest tasting tequila of 2020, which is when they were in that competition ahead of the public launch of 818. And she posted the scorecard on it where it said the judges basically wrote on it like, we don't know what it looks like, who makes it, or how to get our hands on a bottle. By all means, if you can get your hands on it, definitely do. Then slide a glass our way. So there's another mini lesson in here of like don't be afraid to innovate and do what no one else is doing. I can imagine that it was probably challenging to get a boardroom of traditional marketers on board with this idea of presenting the brand anonymously into these taste testing competitions when they could have so easily leaned on the fame and the recognition of the Kardashian-Jenner name and hoped that that would kind of like sway a little bit people's perception. Um, And so I love that she decided to do this and she really wanted the quality of the product to be at the forefront and to create something so good that it sells its fucking self. It doesn't need to be attached to Kendall Jenner. It doesn't need to have a famous person's name on it because it's good on its own. So that's the first lesson, is to create a product that it's so fucking good it sells itself. The second lesson is to know your ideal client and give them what they want. So what subset of the population drinks the most alcohol? College kids. What subset of the population uses social media the most and can bring hype to an alcohol brand via TikTok, Instagram, whatever? College kids. And what do college kids want? They want a chance to hang out with a celebrity. Get some bragging rights, get some cool pics to post on social media. And of course, they want free alcohol. So Kendall understands this, or at least her team of marketers, they understand this and they've really nailed knowing the ideal client and being able to give them what they want through this whole like college tour marketing campaign. Another piece of this is the lesson of knowing where your ideal clients are hanging out. So she didn't go looking for 21-year-olds or college-age kids in LA or Manhattan, although there would have been plenty in those places. She was like, no, the best place to find alcohol-guzzling 21-year-olds is college campuses. Let's go to the biggest party schools and pass out free shots. So this is the same reason why if your service is for middle-aged businessmen who are stressed out and struggling with their health because they are executives or managers or CEOs, you should probably be on a platform like LinkedIn rather than TikTok. And it's not to say that, you know, every demographic has a, a, is platform specific, but it's this idea of like really figuring out where are my ideal clients hanging out? How are they consuming? What are the spaces that they're in? Where can I actually find them? And even further, this is also kind of about knowing among what demographics your product or service is valued. Valued. Underscore valued. Where is it valued? Right. Alex Hormozi has this quote. Maybe it's his, maybe it's not. I don't know. But I think I heard it from him where he's like, solve rich people problems and you'll be rich. And I have helped a lot of clients reassess their target audience once they realize that like teenage girls maybe weren't the best market for their high-ticket coaching because teenage girls don't yet have that kind of disposable income, generally speaking, right? But at some level, like it's not even about who has money or doesn't because teenage girls are a great market for Taylor Swift, for example, because they value the fuck out of her music and experiencing it live. And they have parents who will help pay $1,500 to $3,000 to take them to the Eras Tour concert. Right. So college kids certainly aren't the richest demographic to approach with your luxury tequila brand. Although I will say at these big expensive schools, like you will get a lot of kids with parents who are are doing very well because how else would they foot the $150,000 bill to send their kids to these colleges? But even a broke college student values alcohol, unfortunately. So they're going to pay for it, right? It's just unfortunately it is the central theme to most things that you do in college, especially at these kinds of schools. And I'm speaking from experience, right? So knowing where your product or service is going to be highly valued so that your ideal customers aren't hemming and hawing about the price and comparing, oh, what's the cheapest option? Because for the things that we truly value, we don't let the price influence our purchasing decision. We just accept that that's what it is and we find a way to make it work. So this is also kind of a lesson of like knowing among what demographics or what types of people or what niche is your product or service going to be highly valued. Because even if everybody can't afford it, if it's valued enough, people will find a way because they want in and they know that that's the price that they have to pay. And so they're willing to just pay it. All right. And the last and final lesson from Kendall is to document, don't create. Because storytelling sells better than ads ever freaking could. So what her team did was they filmed this entire college tour experience and they created some really cool ass videos of it to post on social media. And if you go to her page and you find the video and you watch it like it just evokes a certain emotion, like she's coming up to the Ring camera at someone's like house party and she's got like a pizza and like a bottle of tequila and then they like kick open the door and they like bust in and they, they crash the house party. And then later she's like serving shots behind a bar and she's doing all of the local, like, little, like, mannerisms and the slang and the chant songs for the schools. And she's on the dance floor with everybody and people are like filming and she's taking selfies. And it's just this like vibe. And it's really important to remember that, like, emotions are the entryway into sales. We feel something first, and if we like the feeling, we will then move into the logic to see if the purchase not only feels good, but it also makes sense and is gonna help us or be good for us in some way, right? So video content is one of those things that gets you a lot closer to a sale because when it's done well, it evokes a really strong emotion from the customer, and then they start to associate that feeling with the experience of your product or service. This is like as old as time marketing advice. This is nothing new, right? This is why they sexualize so much stuff in like marketing. Because if we can get you to feel cool and feel sexy and feel important by watching this like advertisement for a beer, you're more likely to associate that beer with that sort of feeling. This is also really prevalent with like Coca-Cola. They do a really good job of associating in people's minds the, the logo and the brand and the idea of Coca-Cola with this feeling of happiness and being with friends and being with family and having memories and cracking a Coke. And it creates this like sensory experience where we associate Coke with happiness, right? So people have always been doing this since the dawn of time, but it's a really great reminder that video content can be one of the most effective ways to evoke those emotions that then help people associate how you want your customer to feel with the brand. And then they get a lot closer to buying. And we do this through documentation. I think it's really powerful through documentation rather than just like creating again to try and like get a result or I'm creating something because I want you to click buy, but I'm actually like documenting, I'm storytelling, I'm taking you along the journey and that helps you feel something even deeper. And so the story of what Kendall has done here, going on this college tour and showing up and surprising all these college students and partying with them, plus that documentary-style footage of it, will be inevitably passed around and shared on the internet way more than an ad for 818 ever, ever would. If you look up Kendall Jenner or college tour 818, I'm sure you'll see like tons of TikTok videos. All the kids who were like in the crowd who got a snippet of her, who were taking shots with her, who— they came to her school. Like, there's videos everywhere of this thing. It was one of the smartest ways to make a brand go viral. And there's some stats here that I want to share just to kind of back up this idea of documentation and storytelling. 92% of Gen Z express a desire for brands to craft ads that unfold like compelling stories. And that was according to the Brand Shop 55% of consumers are inclined to remember a narrative over a mere list of facts, which just underscores that profound impact of storytelling-style content. People remember narratives way more than they remember facts. And the last one, 68% of consumers attest that brand stories play a pivotal role in shaping their purchasing decisions. So having that kind of that like brand story, that story to follow along with that really hooks people in. So the tip here for all of us is document the behind the scenes of your journey, of your offers, of your day-to-day. It doesn't need to go viral. It doesn't need to be as crazy, as wild and out as Kendall Jenner on the college tour, but it's oftentimes a much more nurturing style of content. That really allows people to feel like they know you on a deeper level. So document, don't create, and weave storytelling into absolutely everything that you do. Podcasting, emails, captions, social content, all of it. Tell stories, give examples, share your real life, share your experiences. There is no better way to bring people along the journey with you and to establish a powerful personal brand than storytelling. I also love the fact that all these tips kind of like morph into each other and fit together and create this like beautiful work of art of just incredible advice around business. So who would have thought that we could learn all of this from Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Kendall Jenner? Regardless of whether you like these people, if you're fans of them, if you respect them, they've done some really cool shit. They're building powerful movements and brands and they got some marketing genius I gotta say. So take what you will from this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you liked it, I would really appreciate if you take a screenshot wherever you're listening, share it to your Instagram stories, tag me. I would love to know what your top takeaways were from this lesson. And as always, the best, best thing that you can do for the podcast is to please, please, please click the follow or subscribe button wherever you are listening to this episode right now. It supports the show, and we are doing our very best this year to to uplevel every single element of our production, of our guests, of the content, and all the things. So I love you guys so much. Thanks for hanging out, and I will talk to you next week. Bye!