Miley Cyrus (a.k.a. Hannah Montana) Got Some Advice From Dolly Parton. Here’s the Real Lesson

Cyrus promoted her 20th anniversary special when it didn’t yet exist.

EXPERT OPINION BY MINDA ZETLIN, AUTHOR OF 'CAREER SELF-CARE: FIND YOUR HAPPINESS, SUCCESS, AND FULFILLMENT AT WORK' @MINDAZETLIN

Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus perform in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Getty Images

Twenty years after the TV series Hannah Montana first debuted, Miley Cyrus is celebrating her former show. Her new Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special is now streaming on Disney+. It’s a huge success. Fans still remember and love the series about a normal teenage girl who is secretly also a pop star. It even inspired a Starbucks beverage.

It might never have happened. Disney didn’t have anything planned. So Cyrus followed some advice she once got from her godmother Dolly Parton, she said in a Variety interview. “She told me that if you want something to happen, promote it before it exists. Then no one can say no. So I just started promoting a Hannah Montana 20th-anniversary special that literally did not exist.” And–abracadabra–now it does.

That makes for a great story, and sounds like inspiration for anyone who wants to bring something into being through sheer force of will. But the lesson here is a little more complex than that. And it’s one every business leader, and especially every entrepreneur needs to learn.

Should you fake it till you make it?

I love Dolly Parton, but you have to be very careful with the idea that promoting something nonexistent will manifest it into being. It sounds a lot like the fake-it-till-you-make-it philosophy too many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs embrace. Sometimes it works out. Bill Gates and Paul Allen told Altair they’d written code to make the popular computer language BASIC run on its newest machine. That wasn’t true; they didn’t even have access to a prototype. But when Altair agreed to a meeting, they quickly wrote the code. Fortunately for them, it worked on the first try.

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Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes claimed to have created a device that could run blood tests from a single drop of blood. When it didn’t work as planned, she created fake demos to convince investors to invest and retailers like Walgreens and Safeway to partner with her. That ended with exposure and a conviction for fraud. She’s currently serving 11 years in federal prison.

Fans still love Hannah Montana.

With that in mind, I invite you to consider the rest of what Cyrus had to say about bringing her wished-for Hannah Montana anniversary special into reality. She began suggesting in interviews and public appearances that something special was being planned for the anniversary, even though at the time that wasn’t true. Fans lapped it up. Cyrus knew they would from the number of questions about a relaunch and nostalgic recollections she’d heard from Hannah Montana fans over the years. She started sending fan reactions to Disney execs and telling them how big a hit the special would surely be. And then they couldn’t say no.

It may be subtle, but there’s a difference here. Faking it till you make it is lying to impress others for your own gain, and to buy time. On the other hand, in this case, promoting a special that didn’t yet exist–but that Cyrus knew she could create–gave fans the chance to tell the world how they felt about Hannah Montana. It gave Cyrus a chance to measure those feelings and engage with some people who love the long-ago series. And it gave Disney execs a chance to see the huge opportunity right in front of them.

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