Today, I spoke to Peter Guber, who is the author of Tell To Win, the Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, the former Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, and the producer of classics such as “Batman” and “The Color Purple.” In this interview, Peter talks about the art of storytelling in business, how he’s built his personal brand, and more.
What made you want to write “Tell to Win”? Why did you decide to write it in 2011?
It wasn’t until Act III of my life when I had an epiphany that the power of telling 
purposeful stories is the secret to business success. My “ah-ha” was that everyone shares a universal problem – to succeed you need to persuade your listener or listeners to support your vision, dream or cause. In decoding my own successes and failures, a consistent pattern emerged. I realized that when I was successful, I was connecting to my listeners emotionally, aiming at their hearts by telling purposeful stories. Embedded in these stories was the information on which I wanted them to act. When I failed, I was firing soulless PowerPoint bullets, facts and information. In other words – I was firing blanks!
Through my new book, Tell To Win – Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, my mission has become to empower both business and non-business folks to benefit from the persuasive power of telling purposeful stories and using this as their game changer in the Act I’s and Act II’s of their lives.
I decided to write the book now because we’re living in an age of acute economic uncertainty and rapid technological change. It is not the 0’s and 1’s of the digital world, but the ooh’s and aah’s of telling your stories that can overcome fear and make the powerful emotional connections in its listeners, compelling them to act. Using the power to sell products, build brands, foster relationships, and change history is your single most powerful advantage.
What are your top three tips for becoming a better teller of stories in business?
- Motivation. It’s not someone else that you’re targeting, it’s you. You have to be sure of your intention before trying to get someone else’s attention. You have to own what you want and what you’re going to say, before you tell it. You have to make sure your feet, heart, tongue and wallet are all going in the same direction. In essence, your authenticity must shine through in your telling.
- Know who your audience is. Be interested. Who are they? What are their aspirations? And what’s in it for them? And then tell your story through that lens.
- Be interactive. Engage your listeners in a dialog, not a monolog. Make them participants in your tell, not just passengers. That way, they’ll own it. By surrendering proprietorship over the story you told, your listeners will more powerfully viral market it as their own.
How have you built your personal brand and the brand of your companies? What were a few of the key branding ingredients?
My personal brand was built around engaging in many different activities – on the entrepreneurial, executive, social and philanthropic arenas – always with the credo of being curious rather than critical – constant and never-ending learning. A willingness to laugh and cry together with whoever I worked with or for – to embrace risk in everything I’ve done and be loyal and yet ambitious, opportunistic, but not an opportunist. In the end, I’ve always been active in my own rescue.
What’s the difference between a regular story and a purposeful story? What if your story doesn’t have a purpose?
Telling any story has a purpose. It’s the way we’re designed. In business, telling a purposeful story could be to engage your audience to buy your products, to hire you or to innovate faster. In life it may be to do your homework more diligently, do your exercise more intensely, to eat more intelligently, to join your church, vote for your candidate or to become friends. And finally, if you are simply a teller of stories in front of an audience, your purpose is to get a laugh, cry, scare or some other emotional reaction.
Can you give an example from your own career where you told a story that resulted in a new business opportunity?
In early 1990’s, I wanted to engage one of our companies in building a whole new type of multiplex theater in a city that many felt was overbuilt already – Manhattan. This would require, through a story I told, convincing my own management to embrace the idea of building a 16 or 20 screen multiplex theater that would play all the films that were available in the marketplace in one location rather than the 2 or 3 screen facilities that dotted all over the city at the time.
This would change the whole experience from going to a movie to going to the movies. I told them the story of audiences going into a large food emporium, hungry. If one particular type of goodie that they went in for was missing or sold out, there was so much else there they could choose from. They would always come home satisfied. The story I told ended with me exhorting my employees how we should make movies that people consume emotionally with the same availability as a food court. If the movie that brought you to the theater was sold out, there were 15 or 16 other movies to consume and enjoy. The new business opportunity that resulted was the Sony 67th multiplex which was an enormous success.
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Peter Guber is the author of Tell To Win. He has had an extraordinarily varied and successful career, serving as Studio Chief at Columbia Pictures; Co-Chairman of Casablanca Records and Filmworks; CEO of Polygram Entertainment; Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures; and Chairman and CEO of his current venture, Mandalay Entertainment Group. Among the award-winning films he has produced or executive produced are “Midnight Express,” “The Color Purple,” “Gorillas in the Mist,” “Batman,” and “Rain Man.” Guber is the owner and co-executive chairman of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and oversees one of the largest combinations of professional baseball teams and venues nationwide. He is also a longtime professor at UCLA, a Harvard Business Review contributor, and a thought leader who speaks at numerous business forums around the country.
