7 Lessons in Career Success from Bruce Springsteen

In October 1975, a 26 year old Bruce Springsteen graced the covers of both Time and Newsweek, a rare feat for an artist, as part of the publicity for his Born to Run album. Almost 50 years later, Springsteen is still a mega-star who is selling out stadiums around the world on his current tour. As an executive coach, I love to share lessons with clients about the keys to career success. Here are 7 lessons behind Bruce Springsteen's career success and longevity that people can learn from for their own careers.

1 - Do What You Love - Springsteen built a career over the activity he loved to do the most - playing music. He described it this way in an August 1978 interview with the Old Grey Whistle: “One of the initial things is that I wanted to have fun. I started out just doing it for fun.. That is a big reason why I still do it and I’m lucky that I can make a living out of it now. The day it stops being fun is will probably be the day I stop doing it.” He elaborated in another 1978 interview with Henry Tennebaum from The 9 Muses: “I’m a playing musician... Long before I was making records, I was making music in clubs in clubs, in high school dances, in CYOs, Elks Club, you know… Since I was 14 I grew up playing in front of people… You get a record deal, you get a big break… But it is the kind of thing that, if the bottom fell out tomorrow…  I may not always be making records, but I would guess that I would always be playing.”

2 - Do it For Others - Springsteen gets more than personal enjoyment from playing his music. He also feels like he is serving others by sharing his music with them. The energy he gets from seeing his audience enjoy themselves powers him to give his full energy back. He shared this story in a 1978 interview with Joel Siegel of WABC Eyewitness TV news in New York City: “I got into a cab with a guy in Texas and he said ‘You know, I go to some concerts and I feel good for the whole next day, and I go to yours and I feel good for a week too. And some kids say, you know, I hear ‘Born to Run’ or ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ and it made me do this or it made me do that. You can change people’s lives and people’s direction in some ways, you know that’s the best thing that you can do. And that’s what happened to me. When I first heard the early rock and roll stuff, that is what it did for me.”

3 - Be Persistent  - Springsteen had to persist to find big success. As a kid, he demonstrated that early, as he shared in that August 1978 interview with the Old Grey Whistle: “I was only 9 and I remember it and I saw Elvis and it affected me enough to go out and get a guitar and try to play it, which I couldn’t do, because I wanted to play like it right away. In those days, When you went to take lessons it was like some crazy song or something. I gave up until I was 13 then the English thing happened in America with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals. That was the time when I was in my teens. 1965. I was 15." Springsteen would continue to persist in making his music for years, even when his first two albums did not crack the top 50 bestseller charts.

4 - Be Resilient - Over the decades of his career, Springsteen has had to bounce back after professional and personal struggles. After the success of his third album, 1975's Born to Run, he had a lengthy legal battle break with his first manager. He coped by touring and playing while the lawyers fought. After he had a mental breakdown in 1982, he started to get therapy to help him work through the pain from his childhood that he had suppressed for years. Springsteen rolls with the punches of life, often transferring the stressful energy into new content for songs along the way.

5 - Work Hard - Springsteen's work ethic is legendary. He will play on stage for three to four hours. He continues to write new music. He shared his philosophy this way in his August 1978 interview with Old Grey Whistle: “If you want an audience, you got to get off your ass….you gotta go get it…They’re not going to come knocking on the door…  If you want it, you better go take it. You better go work for it.”

6 - Keep a Great Team - Springsteen worked hard to attract and retain a great band around him. In fact, the E Street Band is so outstanding that they have been separately inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As "The Boss", Springsteen has set high expectations for his band members while also nurturing the personal relationships that have engendered enormous loyalty.

7 - Take Care of Self - At age 73, Springsteen has kept himself physically fit enough to still do high energy 3-4 hour live shows every other night. Springsteen also has taken care of his mental health since his 1982 breakdown, especially since he knows he carries an inherited risk from his father, who had paranoid schizophrenia. Springsteen shared this with Esquire magazine in 2018: "I have come close enough to [mental illness] where I know I am not completely well myself. I’ve had to deal with a lot of it over the years, and I’m on a variety of medications that keep me on an even keel; otherwise I can swing rather dramatically and . . . just . . . the wheels can come off a little bit. So we have to watch, in our family. I have to watch my kids, and I’ve been lucky there. It ran in my family going way before my dad."

In 2016, President Obama awarded Bruce Springsteen the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Seven years later, at age 73, Springsteen continues to play 3-4 hour concerts at sold out stadiums around the world. What an amazing career.