Ep 166: Creating Success Through Reinvention: What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Self Image and Identity

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week . Today is Super Bowl Sunday in the United States and my Kansas City chiefs are going for back-to-back Super Bowl wins .

We play the 49ers this evening and you know it hasn't been our best season , but it has probably been our most watched season by people you know of all walks of life , most notably the newest group of fans , which are the Swifties , because Taylor Swift is dating my favorite player , travis Kelsey , number 87 . And a lot has changed for the chiefs this year .

It's not going to be totally the topic of the discussion , but I am going to use some of Taylor Swift's genius to talk about the topic for today , which is going to be about reinvention . But before we do that , I just want to . This will add a little credibility to why I want to lean into her and a little bit about how she does things .

Listen , since her first appearance at a Kansas City chiefs game in late September through the end of January , an expert in media and brand has valued her presence at the games at $331.5 million in brand value for just the Kansas City chiefs .

This brand value basically means that is what it would cost the team if they were going to pay for that number of eyeballs , so if they were going to buy it in print , radio , tv ads , social media they are everywhere . Now , as a longtime Kansas City chiefs fan , most of my Facebook friends are from the chiefs fan blog .

They are that all started from me about three or four years ago . I went from just my universe of core friends to about a thousand people and the bulk of them , two thirds of them , are Kansas City chiefs fans and they are not happy about this whole Taylor Swift , travis Kelsey thing . And listen , it hasn't been our best season .

We've been distracted , maybe a little bit by that , but there's just been some things Offensive coordinator to the Washington commanders last season . I feel like that has thrown our offense into a bit of disarray and we typically have one of the best offenses in the NFL , but our performance overall this year was tough .

Like we had receivers who could not catch a ball . My beloved Travis was triple teamed so we didn't even get to enjoy his celebrations . Like , if you're not a Kansas City chiefs fan and you're not a Taylor Swift fan , I do invite you to go to YouTube and put in the search bar Travis Kelsey SNL monologue . So he hosted after the last year's win .

He hosted Saturday Night Live shortly thereafter and he's hilarious .

His monologue was so charming and so funny and if you just look at any of the mini dancing compilations on YouTube for years which is kind of why I was so drawn to him he's just got a big personality and he's so fun to watch and he's a great dancer and he's just honestly hilarious and seems so charming . So I love the two of them together .

I am one of the ones who've been defending . I mean , I'm just like , let them be in love . You know , they're very cute , they're young , like , personally , I hope they last , because she's a huge star and I think it's going to be hard for her to find someone of her star power that's not threatened by her .

And I think he's granted , she's helped catapult him even more broadly into you know , center stage , most notably globally , because it's like NFL stars are not really well known outside the United States . He's well known in NFL circles but the average , even US citizen didn't really know who he was .

But he started with his SNL thing even before he started dating her . Because he's now signed with creative artists agency out in Hollywood Like he's on all kinds of commercials now like I think , the NFL sort of his side gig , her side hustle now but she's catapulted him even globally .

Like now people know who Travis Kelsey is and , honestly , just a few stats , other stats that are attributed to her her Eros tour has contributed an estimated $6 billion to the US economy in 2023 . Let me just think about that . That's for one pop artist and her United States tour . Like that's insane .

The AFC championship game where we beat the Ravens to secure our spot in the Super Bowl had 55.5 million viewers . It was the most watched AMC championship game ever in NFL history and it was a 17% increase versus the year before . That is the swift effect I promise you because , honestly , if I've been a long time fan , this was not our best season .

If you had asked me at any point before Christmas if we were going to the Super Bowl I would have said no , this is a rebuilding year . I didn't have a terrible record , but for us it was just a that my hot mess for a lot of the games .

And the low point came on Christmas Day when we lost to the Raiders a team that I don't even know if they won 50% of their games this year and the chiefs and the Raiders are longtime rivals like bitter rivals . So it's stung and I thought we're done , like we're . We didn't even secure , we were a wild card .

We didn't secure one home field game throughout the playoffs and usually we have a home field advantage throughout .

Like it was a bad season , you know , but interestingly we had an additional 2 million women tuning into the NFL since Taylor Swift started attending our games in September and 175% increase in sales for the Kansas City Chiefs October game versus the New York Jets , a 20% surge for all games since her first appearance .

And merch sales for Travis Kelsey's number 87 jersey have surged 400% . And lastly , this is the most expensive Super Bowl ever $10,752 per ticket , which is 70% more than last year . So the NFL is cashing in and Taylor has brought a ton of notoriety to the game .

We have a ton of new Swifties fans , so I will say to all of you if you're one of them , welcome to the party . I have been a fan since I was a little girl in St Louis , which is just down the road from Kansas City , so I've been there through all the dark , lonely years when people used to say , but why are you a Chiefs fan ?

They never win , and I will just say it's been a very fun five years , but I am nervous . I'm just going to be honest . I'm nervous about this game . Definitely , the playoffs represented a comeback and we're starting to perform at our level of talent , but I don't know Like I don't know if we can do it .

The 49ers are tough , and I'm nervous because we didn't play well for most of the season . However , that is not what we're going to talk about today . I just wanted to give you all those stats . On Taylor Swift , though , because she is a phenomenon . I am not a Swiftie . I admire her , though I mean , how could you not ?

You know , she has been around since she was like four , you know , in her mid teens . I'm not a I don't know all things Swifties , so forgive me if I get some of this wrong , but I did a little research on her to try to uncover , like , what is her thing ? She has definitely these are the words of a non Swiftie fan saying this .

So I'm thinking I'm talking here like a marketer and a brand person , like she has just reinvented herself . Now I , you know , I think the first pop person to really do this effectively was Madonna , and that's my era of talent , right . So she definitely came on strong when I was in my late teens and she just reinvented herself fearlessly over the years .

And I see Taylor Swift as sort of the same . You know , like she started in country .

Now she's crossed over and , as I've researched it a little bit , and I think , as the name of her tour this year says , like she thinks of her life in eras and each album that she puts out represents a different phase or chapter of her life , and I think that's been one of the keys to a lot of different things .

Number one is it's been a key to her staying relevant , because you know she's now twice the age she was when she first started out and so in order to stay relevant , you've got to grow and stretch your fan base and you're changing and grow . She grew up in the music business , so of course she's got to reinvent .

So I think she just really embraces it and she doesn't just dabble in reinvention . Her music and sound and her vibe for that album , the color , the styling of it , the sound of it , is different for each album and she shapes her identity to reflect the different phases of her life .

And that , to me , is her genius , and there's lots of nuances to it that I think is a non-swifty I can't fully appreciate and I , to be honest , I don't know , because I'm just not that close to her .

But that's my observation is it's her fearless reinvention , right , while I think staying true to who she is and I found this quote from her that's going to launch us into what I want to talk about in this episode , which is reinvention , and her quote is I will never change , but I will also never stay the same . That is brilliant , right ?

So she's basically saying I'm always gonna be who I am at my core . That's not gonna change , but I'm not gonna be afraid to put myself out there in a new way , like she's . She's owning that and I think that is genius . And she has said in interviews that she likes to think of her albums as chapters of her life , so she's not gonna be put in a box .

In fact , her whole thing is about not staying in the box , like she just does what she wants to do how she wants to do it and it just doesn't matter to her how people are gonna respond . And I think that level of self-belief and authenticity are very attractive to women of all ages .

Like her , fans span the age ranges , like my youngest nieces who were way-preteeing , all the way up to friends of my age . I have friends who have gone to three different tourist stops this past year Grandmothers , mothers , daughters and their daughters . Like that is who she attracts .

And I think it's that fearlessness and level of self-belief and probably a just , well-honed talent Like you can't last that long if you're not good . So clearly she's good , but more than that I think she's been good at saying I'm gonna go do this now and I'm all in on that . So my question to you is like what if you did that ?

What if you thought of your life in eras , in chapters ? Right , and I feel like we don't . We in general , we think of our life in more continuity .

You know we try to stay the same , we start thinking of ourselves in a certain way and we realize that people around us think of us in that way , and so we start to worry about what if we did follow that new dream , what if we did put ourselves out in the world in a different way ? What are people gonna say ? What are my family gonna say ?

What are my friends gonna say ? What are the people that I used to work with gonna say if I just leave that 25 or 30 year career and and go do something else ? Right , I think reinvention , in my opinion , is fairly easy when we're young and I would qualify that as when we're just starting out of school , you know .

So , like our 20s into our 30s , we're still figuring it out . But by the time you get to midlife , which starts around 39 , I think it can be very intimidating to try something new , to put yourself out in the world in a different way , and I think a lot of times when we do that , we worry about the outer trappings of that .

So when we think about going after reinvention , we think about okay , well , what do I want to do and what skills do I need to acquire to do that , and what actions do I need to take to start making that happen . But the reason most reinventions don't work for the average person is because we're not dealing with the core of it , which she does right .

We're not dealing with the identity shift and that , to me , is what's so brilliant about Taylor Swift is that she just boldly restyles herself . So you see it , not just through some of the songs or not just the styling of the album , but the whole thing is different and she pulls that thread all the way through her life in a very kind of tangible way .

And I feel like that is something that I think we don't think about .

When we think about career reinvention , business reinvention , you know , self reinvention , we might think about what new job do we want to go do , or what business do we want to start , or what city do we want to move to , or what are some of the new things we need to do , or whatever .

But I don't know if we think about styling our entire life in a new way . I feel like that is what she does , musically speaking . Like what , if your life was a mood board or a vision board , and if you did two of those , if you did one on where you are today that would reflect how you put yourself out in the world in terms of a personal style .

That would reflect your level of income . That would reflect the possessions that you own . That would reflect the professional career that you have , the relationships that you have . What if you did a vision board or a board of your life right now ? So that would be interesting .

And then what if you did one that was of a complete reinvention , all in All , in Not just a new job , not just starting business or the side hustle , or not just finding the relationship that you want , but all in , because that is at the root of what makes a reinvention stick or not . You can't just do something new .

You have to be someone new , and in order to do that , you need to take a look at . You need to take a look at all of the things about yourself , tangible and intangible .

Tangible meaning not just the skills needed for the job or the practical decisions you have to make in order to head in that new direction that you want to head , but who you have to show up as in order to really make that stick , because it's about believing something new about yourself , and one of the best ways to do that is by giving yourself a tangible

new persona to step into . That's one of the things that she represents so beautifully on her eras tour , even in her albums , is that , you know , this album is very different from this album and sound and styling and whatever and she kind of , like I said , pulls that through and that's kind of the beauty of it .

Well , what if you did that in your life , right , what if it wasn't just about that big new thing you wanted to go do ? What if you really spend some time saying , okay , well , what are all of the ways that I'm showing up visibly and , like I said , intangibly ?

So your habits , your persona , the things you spend time on , just who you are visually and who you are internally , and shifting those things to rise up , to meet whatever . The new thing is that you want to go do . That's the reason I think that we don't really go for the big new thing we dream about , the big new thing .

We may even do part of it , but I think it's the rare person that fully reinvents themselves , and this is something that's near and dear to my heart as well . I will say I've talked about it on the podcast before , but my whole life really has been about reinvention .

I mean , I had really good parents and a good , stable family , but I did not grow up in a family where my mother or father worked in a white collar , high paying job . My dad worked for the government .

It was a stable job and it certainly provided a good life for us but wasn't privileged by any stretch , and my mother was a stay at home mom and so for me , I did not grow up in a household where we were expected to perform well and to be good , productive kids and whatever , and we were encouraged to pursue our passions around things , and so for me in

high school it was far more about cheerleading , that was , I was very serious about that and that whole thing was very , very important to me , more so than studying , and I was a good student and smart or whatever , but I didn't ever crack the books .

I've talked about that before on the podcast , and if I could do it over again , I would do that differently , because I didn't get serious about school until I had to pay my way to go back . I went to one year of college and I just wasn't into it .

I wanted to get out into the world and do stuff and so I became a hairstylist and that was a very cool thing for me but it was fun . But it wasn't too long of doing that that I started to observe the lives of my clients .

You get very close to your clients when you're a hairstylist , you know , because you're stuck together for a couple hours , you get to know them and just the way they thought about a lot of the women were successful career women professionals , doctors , accountants , entrepreneurs , whatever and the men as well . They were a lot of them own successful businesses .

They were doctors , lawyers , one of my clients , like at one time on the St Louis Blues hockey team , like very , very successful people , people that I had never really been exposed to before and I realized very quickly that I wanted to go back to school .

They inspired me to think about my life and my possibility in a completely different way and so I went back to school , got straight A's , paid my own way through a private college in St Louis and when I left my beauty business job , when I let those clients go , that was my first big reinvention and it was really hard .

I mean that was a fun era for me , a fun chapter , because it was 100% creative . I got to connect and be a part of people's lives who were just the most interesting people that I'd ever known in my entire life . So saying goodbye to those people was really hard .

But I reinvented myself completely , even took a step back in pay believe it or not for my first corporate job , because I knew I wanted to be in marketing . I didn't yet know what that held for me , but I will say then that the entire journey of my corporate career was a series of nonstop reinventions

. As you climb the ladder , you have to see yourself in a different way . You have to put yourself out into the world in a different way .

You have to acquire a new set of skills , and I will say , too , that that is a time period that I got very comfortable with who I was and who I became , and that is how I saw myself as a corporate brand strategist , and I was very proud of that . I identified with that .

And now one of the hardest things probably the hardest thing that I have ever done in my entire life is to start putting myself out into the world in this way as an entrepreneur . Not just hard , because I had to learn all the things . I'm bootstrapping it . So I had to learn even editing this podcast . I do that myself .

Still , all the emails , all the everything that's done , I have to do it myself . Now one could argue oh , you're in marketing , so that's easy . Not really Like . When you're in marketing , it's the rare person that's an expert in everything . You know .

When you own your own business , there's a lot of different things that have to get done , not just creating the content and doing the things , but it's all of the things that make you show up . And when you have to physically master all of that , it's been daunting .

It's been daunting , but far more daunting than that has been the self-belief to just do it and to do it despite , honestly , how I felt sometimes about it and how I thought others who were like well , what is she doing ? Like you know what I mean Like she is a corporate brand . She says why is she doing this ? What is she doing ?

You know , I spent a ton of time there and it took a long time and a ton of self coaching for me to stop semi hiding , you know , to actually get out there on Instagram and start building my community , and it's growing now . But it took a long time . I was stuck at under 500 followers for a long time and it's just now .

In the past couple years , started to grow right and I've got a long way to go . But I will say a lot of almost 100% of my problem had to do with my fear of what people around me were going to say . So when I talk about reinvention , I know a lot about that and I know a lot about it too from a brand perspective .

I have led several brand turnarounds and reinventions , large and small , and when you're reinventing a brand , usually you do it top to bottom . It's not just the dressing of what you see in an ad campaign , but it's ideally the whole thing .

You know you're reinventing through the experience level so that when customers interact with you , they feel a tangible difference . In that . That is not easy to do and it requires everyone inside the company or the brand to think of themselves in a different way . The same thing is true for you .

So if you're in a place in your life where you just feel like you're , I don't know , kind of coasting or a little bit bored or stagnant or maybe even afraid , maybe hiding a little or pushing away a little from what you really want , what you really feel like is calling to you . I would encourage you to think about it a little bit differently .

Yes , think through those things that you need to , those action steps you need to take to skill up , to plot out this new thing that you want to go . Do , plan it out , be clear about that .

But , I think , address the self-image , the self identity stuff underneath it , because that is the piece , that identity shift , is going to be the difference in whether or not you see yourself in a new way . And you have to be the first one to do it . You have to first be someone new before anyone else will believe that you are that new thing .

And eventually , if you show up in that new way , consistently , again and again and again , eventually everyone around you will realize she's really transformed herself . That's the work . It's less about the things that you're doing and more about who you're being , with consistency .

And that is the brilliance of Taylor Swift , as she has not stayed stuck in any of her chapters or eras . She just keeps going .

Like I said , I'm not a Taylor Swift connoisseur , but just from my vantage point , it seems like she just embraces it and thinks of it as a new challenge , a way to explore a different part of who she is , while staying the same person . Her essence isn't different .

What is different is the nuances of the ways that she's showing up , how she's styling herself , how she's thinking about herself and the way that she approaches her music in that era . It's different . It's reflective of who she is at that moment in time , and so you can do the same thing .

You can decide that it doesn't really matter how other people look at you . If we put it in the context of the things I was worried about , it doesn't really matter . If everyone around is like well , what are you doing ? You have a high paying job , you love your job , you've worked this long to get to this level . You're making a ton of money .

Like , why are you doing this new thing ? The answer is very simple because I want to , because it's meaningful to me to start to use all the lessons and the knowledge that I've gained in my reinventions and my journeys to help other people who are earlier on or other people who might just feel a little stuck .

Sometimes we need to look to other people to say , if they can do it , I can do it , and I will tell you I'm not Taylor Swift . I'm not on the global stage , I'm not famous by any stretch , not even in my industry .

So it's like I'm just a regular person who has gone from hairstylist to brand marketer , or first to marketer , then to brand marketer , and , if you want to get really granular about it , I went from hairstylist to sports marketing , to marketing , to brand marketing , to brand strategy , right , and it's spanned several industries , from the wireless industry to financial

services to now entertainment , and I could stop there and just retire at some point and be like , oh , I had the great career . I don't want to do that In my retirement quote unquote retirement whatever , retirement whatever . That I probably won't ever have .

That I don't think , because I like being creative , I like creating , and so it makes sense that now I want to be a creator . Right , and that is what I see myself as now is that I'm in the middle now of if my life is a relay race .

I'm now not quite at the baton handoff , but I'm preparing for it , and I'm preparing for it by spinning up not just this business but another business and I will announce it in a couple of weeks and just in the final stages and I'm very excited about it . Actually it gets to . One of my core passions is helping people earlier on in their career .

This particular business focuses on midlife , because that's a very tough time for a lot of folks , especially when it comes to reinvention but when it comes to almost anything , it's a time when there's a lot of pressures on our life . But this new business will focus on earlier stage , and I'm super excited about that .

So I will talk about that in a couple of weeks . But what I wanted to say , though , to you is that you can't let how you see yourself or how other people view you you can't let that stop you from doing what you really want to do with your life .

I think that's a recipe , for if you fast forward 30 , 40 years , you're going to look back with a ton of regret . I think . Why didn't I do that ? There is no harm in trying something new , in letting go of something that you might have mastered and loved , even to answer this new calling , because that new calling is coming from somewhere .

If there's something new that you want to do , I think you need to go do it . I do . You don't have to totally blow up your life . You can do it as a side hustle or whatever .

But I would say , if that's the case , stop worrying about what you think and what everyone else thinks and start focusing on something else , which is , if you want to do something new , you have to first be someone new .

And one of the best ways to start that identity shift is by taking a cue from Taylor Swift and Think of it as almost a window dressing on you as a person and your life and your daily habits and the way you show up . Reinvent the whole thing , because that identity shift is the piece .

It's insidious and it has a strong grip on us and it will hold you back From heading into the new world you want to head into if you don't address it . So I really think , like Taylor Swift shapes her identity to reflect the phases of her life . What if you did the same thing ? What if you did not get hung up on ? Well , this is just who I am .

What if it's not just who you are ? The core essence of you is the same . But what if you could be Many different things in your life ? Well , you look at other performers , like JLo , like she Didn't let anything really stop her either . Like she , she's got , I think , a clothing brand and Maybe a skincare brand she's got .

She owns some businesses and then she also stars in movies and she has had a pop career . She's kind of does her thing , you know , and she's created herself into a force . We can do that too , granted , not on a global scale , but in your life . Doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks .

What matters is what you think and what you want and what you're willing to do in order to make that happen . And I think don't let it stop at the actions you need to take , because it will never stick . By the time you get to midlife , you have started thinking of yourself most of us in a certain way .

Maybe there's the odd person out there who doesn't get hung up in that , but identity Work is a very real thing .

It's one of the primary reasons I focus my business there on self-image and I would say that the most important part of our invention and if you look at Taylor Swift over the years , over the albums , she didn't just do something new , she became someone new and granted for her . She started so young . Part of that was growing up .

My guess is she's just starting to pick up steam . I mean , my goodness , like she's on a global tour . She's at a chief's game . When she's not touring , you know , she's just like Flying all over the place .

And then I think , when she accepted her Grammy this past week for yet another like album of the year , I think she announced that she's got a new album coming out in April . Like how did she even do that , you know ? And she had one of the highest grossing movies for opening weekend in the United States this year From from her tour .

Like she just seems to be picking up steam . It's like the compounding interest effect of all of the investment that she's done in her life and my bet is that in 10 years we will not See this version of Taylor , like she's just gonna keep going , and I think that's the beauty of it , kind of like what Madonna did , and you can do the same thing .

So I encourage you to Look at your life in a very tangible way right now and and do that side by side board , do a mood board or a vision board of where you are right now in all aspects salary , income , possessions , personal styling , relationships , how . What is your life right now ?

I put it the equivalent of that on a board and next to that I Want you to just forget about the first one and say what if it was something completely new ? What if , in a month , I started showing up in my life in an entirely Different way ?

From the daily habits to the wardrobe , to the way you Enter a room , your level of confidence , your clarity , maybe even , to some extent , the way you speak in public , like all of those things , you can change and tweak everything about who you are , regardless of your age and regardless of what anyone else thinks .

And when you do that , and that new Era of you , that new identity of you , matches this new dream that you have . That dream is now enabled by a new you who's showing up in ways that are consistent with that new thing . You can do this , and I think it .

You know , stop looking at it if you are as daunting which I did for a long time and start looking at it as fun . Life doesn't have to be so heavy , and neither does reinvention just make it a fun new era , make it into a game .

How do I Reinvent myself and who do I want to be now ? Not the essence of you , because that will always be the same your ear , who you are and you want to be authentic to that . But the window dressing you know , the styling of it , you know allowing yourself to just venture into new territory boldly , without anything holding you back .

I Think that is a fun new way to approach who you're being in 2024 . So with that I will say Go , taylor and Travis , because I do hope to go the distance and go chiefs , beat the 49ers . So with that I will leave you till next time . Make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach .

I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called next level . Inside we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at the purposeful career comm backslash next level . Don't forget the . The purposeful career comm backslash next level . Join me and together will make your career and life Everything you dream of .

We'll see you there .