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TELL TO WIN (UNPLUGGED)

A conversation between Peter Guber & Moe Abdou
Tell To Win (Unplugged) Peter Guber with Moe Abdou
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About Peter Guber & Moe Abdou

Peter Guber

Peter Guber is the Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. Films

he personally produced or executive produced have earned over $3 billion
worldwide and include the box office hits The Color Purple, Midnight
Express, Batman and Flashdance. Guber's personal films have been
honored with more than 50 Academy Award nominations, including
winning Best Picture for Rain Man.

Moe Abdou

Moe Abdou is the creator of 33voices — a global conversation about things

that matter in business and in life. moe@33voices.com

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Tell To Win (Unplugged) Peter Guber with Moe Abdou
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This is Moe Abdou. With me today is the legendary Hollywood producer

and proud new owner of the soon to be NBA champions the Golden State
Warriors. It’s a real pleasure to have you with us today Peter.

It’s a pleasure to be here. From your mouth to God’s ears, I wish that is what
happens. Proud is correct, co-owner is correct, and all the rest other things,
their aspirations, they are correct too. One journey ahead but that’s the fun
part.

That is the fun part. Congratulations on the Warriors. Congratulations on

the forthcoming book “Tell to Win.” Hopefully, the upcoming Oscars that
I’m sure you’re anxiously awaiting. What an extraordinary journey for
you.

I’ve been banging away at these businesses for a long time. Sometimes they
win, sometimes you lose but you keep banging away because that journey is
the game.

Peter, talking about stories, I know that stories have been a great
metaphor for your life personally, help me understand how they have
shaped your life.

It’s the only way you can make sense of your life, any life. Narrative is always
lurking. It’s the way we organize elements in music or architecture or food. We
organize them through being able to tell them and give them a meaning, an
emotional meaning.

When we do that, people metabolize the information as held inside them.

Where the restaurant is, how the store works, how the product performs, how
the medicine is supposed to help you get well, whatever it is, the secret sauce
is that the narrative is a tool to give the whole process and the product and the
person meaning. We are wired for that. That’s the way we’re organized.

You know Peter, being in business, one of the common problems business
people face is persuasion. What role do you see story having in business as
a persuasion tool?

It’s the highest level of persuasion because facts don’t persuade, people
persuade. Facts are used by people to persuade. Facts, information and data in
it of themselves are cold comforts. They yield little benefit. They are support
vehicles and they are important. Make no mistake they are totally important
but only when they are embedded in state of the heart technology. The idea

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that they are not explained, but narrated put into context and content, then
the individuals hearing or experiencing them are able to take that information
and make it resonant, memorable and actionable. Only then does the win
happen.

The idea is it’s a cold comfort, just some numbers in decks and PowerPoints. I
think that the idea is: this is not something new. It’s always been this way. It’s
been this way for about 80,000 years. And about the last second since we have
the written word and the last millisecond since we had the digital word. At the
end of the day, we’re still analog folks. We relate heart to heart. We relate
emotionally. We may try to take the emotion out of the equation but you can’t
take the emotion out of the person.

Peter, you bring up this whole issue of media and new media. You have
been a master, at least from my perspective, of harnessing the power of
Twitter and the reach it does. Can you really tell a story in 160
characters? How have you used that to tell your story, because it’s
magnetic?

It’s code. We’ve always had code in the 73’s, in Ham Radio, and CB radio.
We’ve always had codes that express emotion. Even in digital text; when we
text, we put a little parenthesis and two dashes for a smiley face. We’re
always looking to embed emotion into our information transactions.

The idea is whether it’s 140 characters or whether it’s poetry by Robert Frost,
elegance is using the least amount of device, tools, and artifices to make the
most powerful statement. You know, it’s much harder to write a short letter
than a long letter. But the idea is we use these tools and the mix media of
tools to move people emotionally.

When we move them emotionally, they ingest the data, facts, and the analytics
and it’s metabolized, recalled, remembered and repurposed in an experienced
tell to other people. So what happens, is the magic of narrative is what’s paid
forward. It’s putting the words in people’s mouths. It’s turning the listener and
the audience into an advocate or apostle to the proposition.

Peter, if you’re called up next Sunday and you win the Oscars, do you
prepare this little two-minute speech that you’re going to give or is it just
intuitive because of your experience in storytelling because you know
there are some great ones and there are ones that aren’t as good.

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I have been up there a bunch of different times. This time, my name is not on
the screen. I’m not the producer. It’s our company Mandalay Vision. So I
wouldn’t go up there today. Other times, I’ve been the executive producer
when I’ve been nominated and did or didn’t go up there. At other times, the
producer and many times through rewards, I have gone up there.

The idea is it’s not about being up there and making a statement. It’s what the
process means to you and how you hold it. Each person holds it individually.
Winning in the Golden Globe last week for Best Picture which we did or winning
an Oscar or winning a new customer or a client or a patron; winning over on a
person’s ability to overcome a disease by their self help. Anyone of those
things are triumphs that are worthy of the individual’s best efforts and best
tell.

I would say that it’s a nice accolade but it doesn’t mean anything more than
the knowledge inside of you that you’ve been on a journey and the journey has
been successful.

What would you say is the one thing that enables somebody to connect
emotionally whether it’s one on many or a one-on-one with somebody for
the first time? What is that magic that creates that emotional connection
that lasts?

Well it’s certainly isn’t state-of-the-art technology. It’s state-of-the-heart

technology. It’s recognizing that when you’re having a connection to one-to-
many or one-to-one, it’s always one-to-one many times over. The idea is that
you look at the individual you’re dealing with and decide how you want to
move them? Do you want to move them to become your customer, your client,
your patron, your friend, your sponsor? Do you want them to contribute to your
charity or your church, join your tribe or club or whatever?

So whenever you have reasons for success, you organize the facts, figures, and
information inside of a narrative to make them emotional, to render an
experience to them. When you do that, those facts and figures become very
much resonant and actionable.

For example, if you’re in a room with one person or it could be on the phone
too. When you’re breathing the same air in the same room face-to-face, which
is the secret sauce, it’s the main way. When you do that, you have to ask
yourself a couple of things. One is, are you authentic? Are you congruent?
Because that shines through before you speak the first word. That shines
through in a tell. Are you authentic and congruent? Are your feet, heart,

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tongue, and wallet all going in the same direction? That authenticity, that
integrity shines through. Your intention is visible before you speak the very
same first word.

The second thing is to consider your attention. How do you break through the
convulsed bandwidth of your audience or listeners, call them what you will.
How do you do that? You have to break through it. You have to find a way to do
it. One of the ways is what’s interesting to them? What are they interested in?
What’s in it for them? Anyone of those three things and I’ll break through that
cacophony.

Another tool would be to say to yourself -- which is really interesting -- what’s

the goal? Is it generous? Do I have skin in the game? Can they see that it’s a
win-win situation? Am I creating an environment in my tell that is turning me
into we? When they do that, they are more ready to recognize if you’re
vulnerable, the empathy of their position and your position and here you’re
more with an open heart.

Another way to recognize it is when you do your tell, it’s not a monologue. It’s
a dialog. They want to be participants in it. They want to be active in their
own rescue. They don’t want to be passengers. Those are some of the tools
anyone of which can be a game changer. Before you even get to what the
content of the story is.

In the book, you used the word magic as a trigger technique for crafting
these purposeful stories. It starts with finding that intention that you talk
about. Can you give us an example of a defining moment story that you
told yourself about Peter?

Well, I don’t know if I told myself about Peter. I told myself in an experience
that turned in to be a narrative. I could certainly do that.

That would be great.

I’ll give you an example of that which I think is useful. It may be an illustrative
I should say. And that’s this, when I owned the opportunity -- this is a relatively
unique opportunity for me -- when I owned the opportunity to become an
owner of an NBA team and I got that opportunity to have the potential to do it,
I had a partner Joe Lacob. Joe is really on the frontline dealing with the
current owner of that team. There were a lot of people bidding for it; lots and
lots of people bidding for it with equally good bids and it was at crunch time.

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The owner of that team at that point was assessing what to do and he said, I’ll
be back in a few days from the East Coast, where he was taking his son on a
college tour. He was determining essentially who would be the best price. That
was what he said it was. We know we had made a very reasonable, very
effective offer. But we certainly didn’t know or so did the media think that we
were the lead people.

We were in that crunch, I was sitting with Joe in the room and I said to Joe -
Joe, this is the time to get on your plane. He’s in the East Coast. He’s not
expecting anybody to come -- to fly all the way across the coast, get a half an
hour with him. Just for half an hour; sitting in the same room, breathing the
same air and tell him the story of who you are, why you want the team and
why his legacy would be in your hands and that his story doesn’t end when he
sells the team. It’s held with other folks who must treat that franchise and him
with respect.

I said, that’s the kind of feeling people who own something want to have when
they pass it forward because they are realizing they were the steward of it.
They want to leave it better than when they found it. I said to him, my own
feeling is that I’ve had that experience a number of times and it often was a
difference maker in my life.

Well, he didn’t want to do it in the worse way…merge and merge and merge.
He flew across the country. He sat in the same room and despite the headline
in the newspaper in San Francisco, saying somebody else has won the bid, we
won it. I like to believe that that ability to tell the story, his story, in the same
room, face-to-face, breathing the same air was the element that changed the
tale and made him buy the argument and make the deal.

Peter, that’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating story that you just shared. One
of the things that are interesting to me is that when I look at leaders in the
world today, whether it’s entertainment or business, for the most part
most of these leaders aren’t artists. If you were coaching somebody who is
going to give a 60-minute presentation or a 60-minute speech, what would
you help them understand before they go on to make that speech
memorable?

With the speech, remember there is the narrative in the speech and you’re
telling a story clearly but it’s different than interacting; the same kind of
directive when you’re in the room face-to-face with one person.

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When you’re making a speech, you’re really putting forth ideas and concepts.
It’s generally not a dialogue in terms of the speech but here is the key. When
you decide to tell the story, you have to look at that audience as one person.
You have to gauge that audience as if they were one person many times over.

The trick -- I don’t mean tricking somebody -- the trick is to recognize the
same elements are at work with a bigger audience than they are with a small
or with one person. They’re going to ask themselves, am I integrated? Am I
congruent? Is my feet, my wallet, my heart, and my tongue all going the same
direction? You’ll have to evidence that. Then they’re going to look and say, is
there something in this for me? Is there a benefit for me or is this just a cold
comfort?

If you spend time studying and preparing so they know that you have looked at
them as an audience, you looked at them as that and you render an experience
to them; you emotionalize your narrative, you’re going to be engaged at a
whole different level, one-on-one and one-to-many. Then you ask yourself
another question, which they’re going to ultimately do, are you willing to be
vulnerable? Are you willing to be empathetic? Are you willing to really show up
and be there on the line?

If you do that it opens their heart up and then you have the opportunity to lay
forth a tale which will fit with what they want, the benefits they would like,
the shape of your narrative is aimed successfully at an emotional relationship
not a transaction. When you do that, they hear it altogether differently.

Now, the story that you tell is used to embed the important information, data
and facts in them of why your product is good or why the particular behavioral
skills you’re supporting or asking them to support are vital and important, all
that is equally important. But you don’t get to that unless you start at the right
place.

My friend, Robert McKee, who I’m sure you know, says that a good
storyteller always embodies the human condition. So for somebody telling
a story, he or she must talk about the negatives and the positives to make
the story dramatic and to have authenticity strike the audience. Who do
you know…I know you profile a lot of people in your book, who embodies
that that you have profiled or that you have mentioned in your book?

I would say Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama are at the highest essence of that
and even other people who are not in the book like Muhammad Yunus and even
Mehmet Oz. They have a bearing on them that they understand despite the

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economic considerations that, they are called to their process by generosity of

spirit that exudes and supports their narrative. So there is still a sense of
sincerity is beyond reproach. So you hear them in a different way. You can’t be
necessarily those persons but you can still be completely authentic.

Can that skill be taught, Peter?

A hundred percent, not only taught, you’re actually wired that way initially.
You lose it with all the fakery and chicanery and superfluous drama that we are
taught in so many schools and you surrender your authentic self too easily.

Of all these great storytellers that you profile in the book, what would you
say are the most important traits that they embody?

Telling purposeful stories, what they embody is three to four elements. One,
their intention is really clear. They are congruent. Whatever story they are
telling, they are congruent with it. As I say there is an alignment of all of their
value propositions: their heart, their tongue, their wallet, and their feet. They
are all aligned all going in the same direction. As a result of that, you see them
as conscious, sincere, empathetic folks. You relax and you are able to take
them in, in a unique way. Their words rest upon that palette.

The second element that I think what that really happens is that they are not
hiding their goal. They are very purposeful. They are proud of what they are
doing. They want you to contribute to their charity or vote for their candidate
or support their religious belief or their social belief. These are all elements
that are at work in that space.

So that’s what really occurs, so to speak in that marketplace of ideas is

showing up that way. And then a couple of other ingredients that really I feel
are interesting and worthwhile mentioning to you is this, you try to engage
your audience not as a passenger, but as a participant. You look for them to
participate in the engagement and the dialog rather than just merely hear it.
Because when they participate in it, and they’re interactive, their physiology
changes and they metabolize everything in a completely different way. That’s
why laughter and cheering and sports events and that’s why religious events
have so much power because they engage people in the narrative.

I want to mention a few names and tell me the first thought that comes to
your mind with regard to their storytelling abilities. Bill Clinton…

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Phenomenal, because he doesn’t talk at an audience or talk to an audience, he

talks with an audience.

Magic Johnson.

Magic Johnson has the magic. He truly is who he is. What you see is what you
get. He is enthusiastic. When they saw him driving along the freeway, nobody
looking and he was driving along in the car and he was smiling. I thought to
myself, he’s smiling because he’s really authentic. He has an authentic self. He
is congruent of who he really is. He doesn’t put on a mask. He shows up in that
way for himself and for others in the same way.

Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson is a person whose story was misunderstood. He didn’t know

how to shape his story in the arena of life. He knew how to shape it in the
arena of entertainment but not of life. I think that he was incredible,
unbelievable authentic entertainer who ultimately couldn’t get out of that
frame of reference. He couldn’t tell a story in another frame of reference.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela is a beacon of light. His story and how he behaves has such
integrity that it preceded his words.

When you watch public figures or entertainers and so forth, are there
particular people that just move you to a level of just this incredible
emotional connection where you leave kind of like you said with Magic
Johnson like ‘wow’?

Yeah there are lots of them; lots and lots of them. They don’t have to have all
the pyrotechnics of Magic. They don’t have to have all the movements and
physicality and smile and big larger than life qualities. Some are very quiet.
Some are really quiet. Some are in different languages. Even when Castro
spoke with me, he was so clear and so confident even in Spanish, I barely
understood Spanish, but even through the translator, you could see that he
understood how to tell a story and also how to receive a story.

I want to kind of end with your vision for the Warriors. It’s got to be
invigorating for you to kind of get in to this new arena. The opportunity to
co-own a team that has rabid and avid fan base got to be pretty darn
exciting.

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Yeah, it is. It’s a new challenge with a different set of requirements. That’s
what’s fun. It’s a whole different…you’re talking to a whole different set of
audiences, a whole different set of expectations with different people inside
and different people outside. But the idea is still engagement. You have to
engage them emotionally and interactively. You have to get them to pay and
tell your story forward for it to be successful and that’s what we’re going
to do.

The book comes out March 1st. Hopefully, everyone listening to this will
have an opportunity to have visit your website www.PeterGuber.com
before the book comes out. Any insights that you want to kind of leave the
audience with when they have the copy of the book in their hands; how to
use it as a guide and platform for their life?

Any one element, you don’t have to do them all, any one element is all of them
that are inside you. There is no gift for me to you. I’m just shining a light on
what’s inside of you and say here some navigational stakes to get them out and
work for you. Any one of the elements can be a game changer; more of them
taken together, more.

You’re not going to end up as John Grisham. You’re not going to end up like the
ShamWow or the Kenzo knife or the Juiceman. You’re going to end with you,
the best you possible. Enjoying the best you possible, being the most successful
best you possible. The reason why that is so, is because the authentic you can
do it all.

You’re a huge inspiration. I thank you for your time. I wish you the best of
luck with everything that you’re doing, starting with the Oscars to the
Warriors and certainly to this book.

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