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- Ownership—What Taylor Swift, Your Advisory Practice, and a Loaf of Sourdough Have in Common
Ownership—What Taylor Swift, Your Advisory Practice, and a Loaf of Sourdough Have in Common
RIA Automation & Behind the Scenes at Linscomb Wealth
Jud Mackrill
August 16, 2025
Happy weekend. I hope your week was full of doing meaningful things.
I’m tucked into a coffee shop in I’on, here in Mount Pleasant—cold brew in hand, Chance the Rapper’s new album Star Line in my ears.
This week, a theme has been quietly threading its way through conversations, articles, and even music: ownership.
It’s an idea with deep roots. Trying to decipher who owns what is at the center of a lot of conversations these days. From geopolitics to music rights to your own business, ownership has never been more front and center. Everyone has strong opinions about it, because ownership shapes identity, power, and freedom.
So that’s where we’re headed in this week’s Rising Tide.
Here we go.
Ownership—What Taylor Swift, Your Advisory Practice, and a Loaf of Sourdough Have in Common
Next Mile: When Hospitality Becomes a Strategy 🎧
Bookmarks
Automate Your RIA: Why Growing RIAs Need AI & Automation
Milemarker On the Road ✈️
Ownership—What Taylor Swift, Your Advisory Practice, and a Loaf of Sourdough Have in Common
On Wednesday evening, my wife, kids and I gathered in our living room to watch a podcast.
Our guest? Taylor Swift.
Our stage? New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.
90 minutes later, I had received one of the clearest business lessons I’ve encountered all year.
The Pattern Disrupt
Taylor Swift used a live sports‑entertainment podcast to announce her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. No scheduled press release. No staged promo tour. Just a bold, unpredictable moment on a podcast that’s not her own.
That’s her playbook:
Folklore and Evermore (2020)—both surprise‑dropped with zero lead‑time.
Midnights (2022)—revealed live at the VMAs, immediately breaking streaming records worldwide.
The Tortured Poets Department (2024)—smash hits and streaming-first records: over 300 million streams in one day, 1.76 billion in the first week, 4 million album-equivalent units globally.
Like almost all of Ms. Swift business decisions, this launch was no accident—it was a masterclass in disruption.
My family has witnessed her attention to detail firsthand. My wife and daughters attended the Eras Tour in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, where every beat, stage shift, and costume change was choreographed to imprint on memory. Swift shared that she intended for fans to leave those shows feeling full, overwhelmed by the theatrical and some of them described it as a state of “amnesia,” flooded with sensory overload—the template for her design decisions is the endless scrolling feature of social apps. Brilliant. And, mission accomplished.
From Sourdough to Strategy
In the New Heights episode, Swift talked about baking sourdough bread post-tour—and about her biggest business success since leaving the tour. She shared how she regained ownership of her master recordings, paying an estimated $360 million, after a relentless, two-decade drive toward autonomy.
Her journey started with the kind of control you might afford your own 15 year old, not much. She wrote her own songs, recorded her music and retained her publishing rights, but her original recordings, her masters, were owned by others working their way through Big Machine, Scooter Braun, and, eventually, Shamrock Capital. She needed a LOT of money to buy them herself and although she’d attempted to secure them before, she’d never been able to. When she couldn’t broker the deal, she decided to re-record her early albums—Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (TV), 1989 (TV)—and asked her fans to listen to her version, minimizing the value of the originals.
But she never lost the desire to truly own everything she’d created.
Riding the tailwind of the $2 billion–grossing Eras Tour, she executed her strategic reclaim—a win celebrated by her, her loyal fan base and artists everywhere.
Why It Matters to Advisors
I’ve advised financial professionals for 21 years, and the analogy is stark:
Starting out: you own almost nothing—just enough to build on.
On the rise: autonomy becomes essential.
At your peak: owning your client experience, systems, and data is a force multiplier.
We’re entering a new era. AI and data are redefining the playing field. At Milemarker, our focus is giving advisors their version of “master control”—tools and data they fully own and use to turbocharge service and growth.
The Trap of Total Ownership
Here’s the catch:
Own nothing? You’re at someone else’s mercy.
Own everything? You bury yourself in complexity.
The smart play: own what matters. Partner for the rest. That balance is where growth—and transferability—happens.
Your “Master Recording”
Swift’s true masters are a 286 song catalog, including one 10 minute long magnum opus. What’s yours?
What’s the one asset—system, data stream, client touchpoint—you must own to deliver elite-level service?
I’d love to hear your answer—hit reply and tell me.
______________________
On the Pod: When Hospitality Becomes a Strategy
Episode 105: On this week’s episode, Kyle Van Pelt sits down with Phillip Hamman, President & CEO at Linscomb Wealth (LW). Phillip leads the team in developing and executing the firm's visionary strategies. His leadership extends to serving on the LW Board of Directors, chairing the Executive Committee, and contributing as a voting member of the Investment Committee, reflecting his deep proficiencies in investment advisory, client service, and wealth planning.
Kyle and Phillip talk about how hospitality, character, and processes redefine client service. Phillip unpacks the important role that systems and processes play in building a scalable business. He also shares LW's thoughtful approach to succession planning and how leading firms leverage technology to stay ahead.
(00:00) - Intro
Phillip's money moment
(04:53) - How LW guides firms with ambitious plans and goals
(06:52) - How kissing frogs relate to growth
(09:32) - LW's strategic expansion in the Southeast US
(11:50) - LW's organic growth strategy
(14:03) - What makes great client service
(18:34) - The importance of systems and processes
(22:58) - LW's succession planning strategy
(27:12) - The role of technology in highly successful firms
(29:48) - Phillip's outlook on the future of the industry
(32:27) - Phillip's Milemarker Minute
⚡️Bookmarks
Why Growing RIAs Need AI & Automation
Most RIAs are buried in spreadsheets and siloed data. The fastest-growing firms? They’re using AI and automation to scale smarter—with less chaos.
Join us and Beemo on August 21 at 1:30 PM ET to see how top RIAs are doing it. No fluff—just real strategies you can use now.
Milemarker on the Road
Catch my team on the road at the following events or cities:
August 17-20 - Lincoln, NE
August 27 - St Louis, MO
August 28 - Kansas City, MO
September 3-4 - New York, NY
September 7-10 - Los Angeles, CA
September 10-12 - San Diego, CA
If you’re in any of those cities and would like to arrange a meeting time, please reply to this email, and we’ll schedule something on the calendar.
Jud Mackrill