What Business Strategy Female Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Taylor Swift

Tonight at midnight, we enter a new Era ✨

Taylor Swift is less than 24 hours away from releasing her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, and she’s sending Swifties on a wild goose chase to celebrate. 

If YOU are new, the wild goose chases are anything but.

Taylor is notorious for leaving Easter eggs anywhere and everywhere for her fans to interpret. 

Nothing is off limits.

Adults have counted holes in a fence. Grown men and women have analyzed her acceptance speeches and the color of her red carpet looks.

In Taylor’s world, everything is a game and anything could be a hint for her next move. Or it could not be. But the fact that it SOMETIMES IS, has everyone paying attention. 

A recent promotional video for The Tortured Poets Department gives viewers a glimpse of two chairs, two typewriters, and the clock at 2am. Coincidence? Not a chance. It MUST mean something double is coming. 

Friday, December 13th, appearing on a tiny gold desk calendar HAS TO mean she’s going to release something on her birthday this year, RIGHT? RIGHT??

That’s the kind of things that some fans lose sleep trying to interpret, at least.

(Go down the rabbit hole for yourself here.)

I, for one, leave the investigative journalism to those smarter than me with less work to do and fewer kids to care for.

I really appreciate the young Swifties, full of life, who devote their time to creating theories and posting them to Twitter so that the elderly fans like myself can follow along.

Whether you think it’s all absolutely insane and a painful waste of time, OR you are one of the conspiracy theorists…

The question that begs to be answered is…

HOW does she have people calling out of work sick to solve little riddles? 

HOW does a person have this kind of grip on an audience?

When the Eras Tour Film was released onto Disney+, most fans had already seen it in theaters. And yet… there was a worldwide watch party at 9pm ET on the night of the release.

The Eras Tour has been running for over a year already with 69 shows still on the calendar. Between the grainy TikTok footage and the fact that you can now stream the film from your couch, many people will have seen the show 10 times (or more) before they even walk into the stadium to enjoy the show live.

How in the world?

It’s difficult to get 1 person to show up to a webinar they’ve never seen. Imagine selling people on coming to your event when they’ve heard what you have to say 9 times before????

There has to be a secret other than starting the call by giving them the chance to scream the Cruel Summer bridge. 

Though not a bad strategy for increasing your show up rate.

With all things considered, I have a theory.

Taylor Swift has built an insane army of fans who adore her and, more impressively, show up to everything again and again, because she is TOTALLY UNPREDICTABLE IN EVERY WAY EXCEPT ONE….

Taylor Swift is predictably excellent. 

We don’t know WHAT she’s going to do… but boy, we know it’s gonna be good. 

By delivering over and over again, she has proven that it’s who she is. 

One of her strongest pieces of evidence for the strategy of staying unpredictable is #SurpriseSongOclock.

The time at each live show in The Eras Tour when Taylor chooses two surprise songs from her discography to perform for the crowd. The surprise songs change every night. 

You’ve been dying to hear Teardrops on My Guitar live but she didn’t play it in Atlanta? Buy a ticket to Miami and you may have another shot.

“But what if she runs out of songs!!?” People started asking the question. And the moment it started to get the slightest bit predictable, as fans kept track of which songs remained unplayed, she started playing mash-ups.

Two songs mashed together in a totally unique sound and way that they’ve never been heard before. Unlimited combinations.

CRAP. I need to go AGAIN to see THAT!

I’m open to someone changing my opinion that Taylor Swift is the greatest business woman (or man, TBH) of our time, I just think it would be hard for anyone to do at this point.

Over and over, she surprises and re-engages.

She keeps us guessing, then delivers and wows.

Everything, all at once. 

Totally unpredictable, but always, predictably excellent. 

If you see Taylor on our vision board, yes you did and that’s why.

Xo, The Salesgirls