Lessons in business and life from Mariah Carey...

All I Want for Christmas Is You is one of the defining songs of the holidays, and every year I hear some sort of conversation about what Mariah Carey earns in royalties from this song alone (which I will answer that at the end…).

As mad as it sounds, there is an interesting business take on this…hear me out!

One hit wonder, smash hit – easy to assume that Mariah, a megastar especially in her heyday of the 90’s and 00’s, popped out a festive song one year and it went stellar. She is undoubtedly incredibly talented, so surely this was easy for her?

How wrong you would be!

Mariah Carey has released over 40 (yes FOURTY), Christmas songs. Imagine trying to muster the enthusiasm to feel festive enough in the summer months to find words that rhyme with ‘sleigh’ over and over and over again.

Or getting tinnitus from jingling bells.

Yet she did it, and just ONE of those attempts resulted in All I Want For Christmas is You. The other 39 I’d wager none of us have even heard.

Failed attempt after failed attempt, funnily enough reminds me of the reason WD40 is named that way (because ‘Water Displacement 1’ to ‘Water Displacement 39’ were complete failures before they finally cracked it on attempt 40).

So why am I banging on about Mariah Carey, I highly doubt she would be appreciative of my promotional effort on her behalf here…

I suppose its obvious but, the lesson I took from learning about Mariah’s flurry of festive flops prior to AIWFCIY is how much in life and business and success comes down to tenacity, to resilience to go again even if you’ve had the door slammed in your face 39 times, you could be one door away from the deal (or song…) of a lifetime.

Revered as she is in the music halls of fame, surely at some point someone would have said ‘Mariah, lets give this a break – maybe Christmas isn’t your thing’. She must have said ‘get lost’, and here we are.

Alex Hormozi says ‘volume outweighs luck’. The importance of sheer effort of marketing, prospecting, calls, outreach and so on means those who appear lucky, are actually just the ones with the resilience and energy to go again.

I once read a quote that, to be really honest, I embarrassingly thought was complete rubbish at the time. And even worse it was from Churchill, what a plonker I am:

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”. As usual, Winston’s right.

So, something to ponder when you inevitably hear that famous opener from Mariah ‘IIIiiiIIII.... don’t want a lot for Christmas….’ Again and again over the next few weeks, is that if it takes the legendary Mariah Carey 40+ attempts to get her Christmas smash hit, not to be too hard on yourself if your prospecting ‘feels’ like its going nowhere, you don’t know how close you might be to your equivalent smash hit.

AIWFCIY earns between $2.5m and $3m per year in royalties according to The Independent. One heck of a reward for resilience, and your final pub quiz fact for this article. You’re welcome! 😂

Anyway, a very Merry Christmas, wishing you a hugely prosperous 2026 and thank you, as ever, for your readership and support of Premium Estate Agency News, we really appreciate it.

See you next year.

David Lindley.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/mariah-carey-all-i-want-for-christmas-song-royalties-b2874801.html