Why Women Are Rewriting the Rules of the Economy with Misty Heggeness

**Misty Heggeness** (0:00)
A lot of these women, again, because they have more economic agency than they ever have, are really saying, I'm not going to play that game, I'm just going to play my own game here on a parallel path. That's what Taylor is doing, that's what Beyonce is doing in some sense, that's what Reese Witherspoon did when she started up Hello Sunshine production companies, and on and on. And so that I think is a very unique and fun trend to watch in terms of what's happening with women's economic agency today.

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:31)
Good morning, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we have found another remarkable person for you. Her name is Misty Heggeness, and we're going to talk about, of all things, Taylor Swift and her impact on economics, and really I think her impact on society beyond the music sense.
So, Misty is an economist, and she's a professor at the University of Kansas, and I would have said, not that I know that much about Taylor Swift, but her book is fascinating. It's called Swift Dynamics, and she has actually created a course called Swift Dynamics 101, and then she created another course called The Economics of Taylor Swift. Have you ever met her face to face and said, I'm the professor that is like documenting your life?

**Misty Heggeness** (1:29)
I haven't, but it's one of my goals in life.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:32)
If she listens to this podcast, she'll be calling you right up and flying you out to wherever she is and all that. So this is her book, and she has created this curriculum, and it is a very fascinating topic. So welcome to the show, Misty.

**Misty Heggeness** (1:49)
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:52)
So first of all, just as a basis, tell us what is Swift Dynamics?

**Misty Heggeness** (1:58)
Yeah. So Swift Dynamics for me is really an effort to recognize and value all of the economic contributions that women make in society, including Taylor Swift. And it is about understanding the way in which those contributions impact economic growth and development, equity, and the like.

**Guy Kawasaki** (2:21)
And would you distinguish Swift Dynamics from the Swift Effect?

**Misty Heggeness** (2:26)
Yeah. There's a documentary called The Swift Effect. I participated in that, so I'm interviewed in that. It's on the Peacock Plus. And the Swift Effect really is focusing on the economic contributions of Taylor Swift, but without really focusing in on why she is unique based on her gender. And Swift Dynamics really at the core is our ability to understand the economic success of Taylor Swift and women throughout our economy that is specifically tied to their gender and how they maneuver in their careers, given the fact that they're women.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:02)
Yeah. I want to make it perfectly clear to the listeners that if they hear the words Swift Dynamics, they may think, oh, this is about Taylor Swift and how she has a concert and she makes billions of dollars and then she sells records and she sells t-shirts and just the economic impact. But this book is way beyond that. It is about the sociological impact. It is about the mental impact, the psychological impact. This is way more than just, yeah, she's a multi-billion dollar business. So let's just make that clear to everybody so they buy the book.

**Misty Heggeness** (3:37)
I think the thing that's interesting about Taylor is the fact that she has done what she has done, given the fact that she's a millennial woman.

**Guy Kawasaki** (3:43)
And is she kind of like in the words of Seth Godin, she's a purple cow or she's a black swan, or is she indicative of an overall trend?

**Misty Heggeness** (3:55)
I think it's a really important question to ask. And I'll say a couple of things about that. One is, I think when we look at Taylor, there is a tendency to say nobody could replicate that. She's the first one to do it just because her fame is so hard hitting and fast. But there are other women in the music industry who are prior generations of Taylor before there was social media, before there was like this rampant accelerated speed with which we get information out into the world. You could look at Dolly Parton as an example. Madonna would be another example.
I think what she does is replicable.
But I think the thing that makes her really unique is that she grew up in an age where women were told they should go to college for career purposes instead of going to college to find a spouse. Millennial women were delayed marriage, delayed having children, and so they spent their entire 20s in this economic independence space where they just became avid consumers of things that give them joy. And Taylor was on the cusp of that, ready to give it to him. In that sense, she's unique. She really fell into a space where there was like rabid demand for content, and she really brought it to the table. But I do think that there are lessons to be learned from her that are replicable for other folks.