There’s a list of songwriters who've had the most number one songs in history of modern music. First place goes to Paul McCartney, then there’s John Lennon, and then…
It’s Max Martin.
Funny thing is, nobody’s ever heard of Max Martin. Even music enthusiasts don’t really know who he is. But Max Martin is this 45-year-old guy, living in Sweden, who's written almost every hit song you've heard on the radio in the past 20 years.
He started with Ace of Base, and then went on writing hits for all the major acts: NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Bon Jovi, Justin Timberlake…
The list goes on and on.
In total, he’s written 23 number one songs but you couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. There’s even a book about the whole process, of how he creates songs in his Swedish hit factory. It’s a pretty fascinating thing.
But the reason why this is so fascinating to me is…
It’s a great example of a scale ready algorithm in action. You see, what Max did is he's cracked the code of writing hit songs.
He sits in his studio in Sweden, writes a song, and hands it to the artist. But what happens next is… Martin doesn’t go out promoting it. The artist does!
It’s the artist that goes on tour for 18 months, takes it all over the world, promotes it on every radio out there... all of that on the back of Martin’s scale ready algorithm.
And meanwhile, once Max has written the song, recorded it and produced it with artist A, he’s back in the studio with the next person. Applying that same algorithm to artist B. And the cycle repeats.
Sounds familiar?
It should be, because that’s exactly how scale ready algorithms work in business too. Once you've cracked the code of how to do something well… say, how to bring in more patients to dentists, there’s nothing stopping you from packaging all that up and applying that same system to chiropractors. Or financial advisors. Or whatever...
But the real beauty of it is, you only have to do the groundwork once.
The rest is just adapting what you have to fit the business at hand, so you can license your “hit song” to the business owner. It’s the business owner who now takes it from you, brings it to the world and scales it up...
All the while you sit back in your studio and watch the royalties piling into your bank account ;)