With 1 word, Taylor Swift just explained how to be successful in work and life

How can you win love and loyalty from your customers, your employees, your fans—and even the people in your life? Taylor Swift answered this question perfectly with just one word: “Overdeliver.” Overdelivering will impress your customers, create loyal employees and fans, and make all your relationships stronger.

“I wanted to overserve the fans in terms of the amount of songs that they were going to hear and how far I was going to push myself,” she says in her new docuseries, The End of an Era. As you likely know, she made good on that plan. The Eras Tour show ran three-and-a-half hours, divided into 10 distinct eras covering different albums. Then she added another era partway through when she released The Tortured Poets Department. There were a few songs that changed every night, and guest appearances by other performers, such as Ed Sheeran. Oh, and an elaborate illusion where she dove into the stage.

After the tour, in an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, she explained her reasoning. “I wanted to overdeliver. I really wanted to give people more than they expected,” she said. “It just really felt like something that I had to do. Because I’m like, ‘I know these tickets are going to be hard to get.’ I didn’t know how hard they would be to get.” (The show sold out everywhere, and many fans actually flew to different locations just so they could attend.)

Swift continued, “People have lives and priorities. And if they’re going to dedicate any part of those lives to coming to this big show, to packing stadiums like this, I want to overdeliver on production, overdeliver on the length of it, the exertion, the kind of surprises they’re seeing. And really, I’m endlessly proud of feeling like we achieved that.”

Swift shows empathy for her fans

Swift was expressing a key element of emotional intelligence: empathy. She was looking at the situation from her fans’ point of view. It’s rare to hear any big star say that their fans have priorities other than their next show or album. For Swift to acknowledge that Swifties have their own lives is highly refreshing. So is her awareness that it’s hard to get tickets to her shows, and her belief that she owes her audiences more because of it.

Even if you don’t have millions of raving fans spending hundreds of dollars to come listen to you, overdelivering is a good practice and a good mindset. When you surprise people by giving them more than they expected, more than they asked for, or even more than they paid for, they will remember you. And they likely will come back.

There’s a growing community of Inc. readers who get a daily text from me with a micro-challenge, suggestion, or question. (Want to learn more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many are entrepreneurs or business leaders who know how important it is to have repeat customers, loyal fans, and people who are steadfastly in their corner. Consistently overdelivering is a very effective way to make that happen.

—Inc.

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