I watched a Youtube video on Tyra Banks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE057BWoLh4)and commented on it. My comments were inspired partially by words I read from Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella. I decided to rephrase it a bit and write it in a blog post. This way, I can remind myself of it periodically. Here it is:
Tyra Banks did some things right. What gives you success today probably will not tomorrow. Therefore, you need career redirections periodically. She did that. She left the catwalk on top and when I believe her career with it would be on the downswing soon. Many have redirected their careers. Michael Jackson (bumble gum kid singer to teen pop/disco sing to adult r&b/funk/pop singer to Rock/pop/New Jack Swing singer), Michael Jordan (slasher/leaper/dunker to outside-shooter and passing the ball a little bit more), Microsoft (PC software maker to cloud provider) and many more others have rebranded and reinvented themselves.
You plan switches while still on top with the current direction. And you do little experiments to see whats next. Then you slowly but surely switch to the next thing. It’s not done necessarily in this order or way. Nevertheless, the point is; you do not want to be stuck without a wave to ride- you always need something big in your career to keep you in demand and on people’s mind and radar. I do not think she did this to a good degree. Kodak had nothing to fall on when digital photography made its business model obsolete. Its top brass did not see beyond what was making money for them when they were big and profitable and were slow to change with the changing consumer demand. Google currently really has nothing to fall on if its search business fails. Android, Google Maps and other of its big products really do not directly bring in income; they just help increase Google Search usage (its primary money-maker). Gmail and Google Cloud I believe are not profitable enough to run a huge company off of. Alphabet can help, just not right now.
Sometimes, despite best effort, things just do not work out for a while. Abraham Lincoln had a terrible life and was a straight up failure, before finally hitting it big and eventually becoming President and revered. John Travolta had a downtown time prior to getting “Pulp Fiction” to bring this back up. She now needs to find her “Pulp Fiction.” Plus, at a point, you have to use more wit and creativity and less beauty and other time-limited things to sell your goods. Beauty fads or gets stale to the eye; but wit and creativity is not limited by age or physicality.
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