RENO, Nev. — Bill Stainton could talk about the Beatles all day long.
The author and longtime keynote speaker has been inside Paul McCartney’s childhood home in Liverpool, England. He’s been inside the famed Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles recorded almost all of their iconic albums. He’s been inside the clubs where the Beatles got their start; stood in the exact spot McCartney met John Lennon.
“I’m a legit Beatles expert,” Stainton said in a phone interview with the NNBV. “I’ve spent most of my adult life — and even pre-adult life — researching, reading, writing, and interviewing people who associated with the Beatles. I could easily do a one-hour speech … I could easily do a 10-hour speech just going song-by-song and year-by-year.
Stainton, however, refrains from going nine hours over his time limit when he addresses business leaders on what they can learn from the “Fab Four” in his presentation, “The 5 Best Decisions the Beatles Ever Made.”
Stainton, who’s authored a book of the same title, will deliver that message and more at the next Western Industrial Nevada (WIN) breakfast meeting Friday, July 27, at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno.
“That’s really been my job — to figure out what’s the tie-in between the Beatles and the people I’m speaking to and for,” said Stainton, an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and performer from Seattle. “I realized it comes down to one word and that word is ‘success.’ I mean, they broke up in 1970 and the Beatles are still the gold standard. Everyone still says, ‘oh, they might be the next Beatles.’”
With that, Stainton said he examines what made the “Fab Four” so successful and tells his audiences how they can take a page out of the Beatles’ playbook and apply it to their business.
SHAKING IT UP
Any obsessive — or even passive — Beatles fan knows that the legendary band constantly experimented and evolved their sound; from the mop-top pop of “Please Please Me” to the acoustic folk rock of “Rubber Soul” to the psychedelic art rock of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Stainton feels that business leaders can often benefit from routinely changing up their tune, as well.
“The Beatles could’ve kept on doing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You,’” Stainton said. “It’s what their fans wanted; it’s what the record company wanted them to do. But it was taking that risk and deciding to shake it up a little bit that all of a sudden turned them from pop stars into legends.”
At the upcoming WIN breakfast on July 27, Stainton said he would ask the audience what they might be able to do to shake things up?
In addition, Stainton said he’d also encourage business leaders to focus on their strengths, just as the Beatles focused on theirs — songwriting.
“What they really focused most of their energy on was what they could do better than anyone else,” he said. “So what is that for you?”
