What's the Story?

As a movie producer, Peter Guber is responsible for bringing to life dozens of our best-loved stories, from Rain Man and The Color Purple to Terminator 2 and Groundhog Day. Guber, 69, is a towering figure in the entertainment world, with a résumé that encompasses many of the most popular films and TV shows of the last thirty years: studio chief at Columbia Pictures; co-founder of Casablanca Record and Filmworks; chairman and CEO of PolyGram Entertainment; chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment; and finally founder, chairman, and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. And as he puts it, for the first thirty-seven years of his career, he didn’t understand what he was doing—in pitch meetings, presentations, speeches, and conversations—that worked. “It took me thirty-seven years to figure out what I was,” he says. “And I realized: Oh my God—I’m a storyteller! I didn’t recognize it in myself.” The result of his aha! moment is Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story (Crown Business), a book that marshals a sparkling array of anecdotes to argue that the secret of winning in business and life is narrative storytelling.