From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Robert Greenblatt on creativity and business

From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

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Robert Greenblatt on creativity and business

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- Your career path has really, you're so adept at talking about both the business and the creative side, and I think that for a lot of people who are figuring out what their careers are going to be, they're told to pick one. Either you're going to go from the business side, or you're going to go from the creative side. Are you a unicorn, are you the only one who has this kind of position? What do you tell people who want to be able to do both? - Well thank you for saying that, first, I actually have several friends in this business, who I think are also, you know, really adept at both. Because I don't know how you can do one or the other anymore. I guess I would say I'm more of a creative person, than anything else, and that's what I really love. And I'm a theater kid who ended up going to business school, but I also went to film school, and I went to theater school. So I sort of got it all, and if somebody said you have to pick one or the other, I would in, you know, half a second say I'm going to go do creative now, if that's the choice. And I really do love that, but I had a great mentor named Peter Chernin, who is one of the great, if not the greatest, I think, media executive of our time. He ran NewsCorp for many years, and you know, I got to know him when I was very young, as a movie executive at a smaller movie company named Lorimar before we went to the Fox network together. And I was immediately struck by Peter's combination of business acumen, and he could look at a script, and have a meeting with the writers, and tell them, "Here's what you need "to do to make this story better." And I don't really know that I've encountered anyone who had that combination, that equal combination, of skills. And from being a very young executive working with him, I knew that that's what I wanted to be able to do. And I kind of soaked up as much of it as I could get out of working with him, and he's still a very close friend and mentor. But, you know, I could go do theater in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois, and on some level probably be very happy, but, you know, in that case you don't need to worry about a huge business organization, or you know, think financially really. But when you want to be on the big stage, and reach millions of people, and turn it into a big business, you have to be, you know, thinking differently. So it's great, the business side, but for me it's all driven by the creative. That's why the first live musical, I would say, if I was grading myself on that process, I would give myself like a D in terms of the business of that live musical, and the creative was better, I'm not going to give myself an A in the creative, but a lot better than the financial. Because I sort of am always leading with, what's the best show? and then it's like, oh no, we have to figure out what's the best show given the you know, financial parameters that we live in. You can't do one without the other. But, you know, I would be happy to just go off somewhere and create shows with smart writers and directors if I could.

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