3 Business Lessons, Courtesy of American Idol

January 28, 2010 on 8:37 am | In American Idol, entrepreneur, entrepreneurialism | 13 Comments

OK.  I admit it.  I’m a huge fan of American Idol.  I haven’t missed an episode since Season 3, and it’s not likely I’ll lose interest anytime soon. I don’t care what anyone says: it’s just great entertainment.  And since it’s (finally!) Idol season, I thought I’d share three business lessons I’ve learned from AI over the years.

#1: Know who you are

One of the things we’ve heard over and over from the judges is “you need to figure out who you really are”.  In other words, the contestants need to be able to take someone else’s music and sing it like it was their own, to give it their own unique brand.  And there’s business lesson #1.

I don’t know what business you’re in, but I’d be willing to bet that the product or service you sell is available somewhere else at a lower price.  That’s OK; a lot of bands make a great living playing covers.  But every now and then, along comes a singer or a band who can make a cover sound like an original.

Think of what Whitney Houston did for the Dolly Parton song “I Will Always Love You”.  Dolly wrote a fantastic song, and so long as she was the only one singing it, everyone knew that.  The second Whitney’s version hit the airwaves, though, it was “Dolly who?”  Whitney made the song her own, and every person who sings it from now to the end of time will be compared to Whitney, not Dolly.

So here’s the question: what can you do to make whatever product or service you sell, no matter how long it’s been around or how commoditized it is, your own?  How can you make sure that when customers think of your product, they think of you?  How can you create a situation where you are the industry standard by which all other suppliers are judged?

#2: If you’ve got it, flaunt it

Another common criticism from the judges is “You sang that well, but I felt like you were holding back.”  The most common cause?  Lack of confidence on the part of the performer.  They allow their fear of failure to hold them back.  They don’t take risks, and as a result their performances are a little bland.

Then along comes a performer like Adam Lambert, and things get interesting again.  Adam did things with familiar songs that no one on the Idol stage had ever dreamed of doing before.  He dressed like a glam-rocker from outer space, went for impossible notes without any hesitation, and owned the stage.  You couldn’t take your eyes off him, and every week you wondered what kind of magic he was going to do.

So here’s your homework assignment: What risks have you avoided taking because of your fear of failure?  If you weren’t stuck in fear, what would you do differently that would set you apart from the crowd?  What makes you outrageous?

When you figure it out, go do it.

#3: At the end of the day, it’s not just about how well you sing

The judges are always quick to remind the performers that Idol is ultimately a singing competition, but I think Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson, and Adam Lambert might disagree.  All three lost out to performers who are nowhere near as talented as they are, while performers like Sanjaya Malakar and Jasmine Trias survived on the show much longer than their talent warranted.

The same is true in your business: being the best at what you do doesn’t always mean you’re going to be on top.  Business is, ultimately, a popularity contest.  Don’t be mad about that, and don’t try to fight it.  It is what it is.  Just realize that you’ve got a decision to make.

If you want to get the most votes (make the most money, sell the most product, beat the competition), you have to give the voters (customers) what they want.  Remember, though, that the voters are fickle: what they say they want isn’t always what they really want and what they really wanted last week is entirely different than what they want this week and in a different universe than what they’ll probably want next week.  Confused?  Get used to it.  If you decide you’re going after the popular vote, this will be your job: figuring out what to sell to people who have no idea what they really want.

Of course, the other option (and the one I’d encourage) is to just do what you love and be really great at it, no matter what the majority might think.  You run the risk of alienating some of the voters, but the ones who like you and like what you do will stick by you (again, just ask Daughtry, Hudson and Lambert, who’ve sold millions of albums in spite of “losing” on the Idol stage).

There are many other business lessons AI has taught me, but these are my top 3.  What business lessons has American Idol taught you?

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I know this is really late, but I wanted to let you know that the winner of last week’s Social Media Fable Pick-a-Moral contest is Jim Keenan, who said that the moral of the fable was “Act online as you would offline. Being social is being social no matter where you are. It’s still about people.”  (I know, that’s technically three morals, but all three were really good!)

Congratulations, Jim!  If you’ll direct message your mailing address to me on Twitter (@jerrykennedy), I’ll get your autographed copy of “Motivation 101″ sent out right away.

Thanks to everyone who contributed a moral…all of them were great!