Trillion Dollar Coach

The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell

By: Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

The team behind How Google Works returns with management lessons from legendary coach and business executive Bill Campbell, whose mentoring of some of our most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped create well over a trillion dollars in market value.

Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders on both coasts, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.

Leaders at Google for more than a decade, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle experienced firsthand how the man fondly known as Coach Bill built trusting relationships, fostered personal growth - even in those at the pinnacle of their careers - inspired courage, and identified and resolved simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments. To honor their mentor and inspire and teach future generations, they have codified his wisdom in this essential guide.

Based on interviews with more than 80 people who knew and loved Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach explains the Coach’s principles and illustrates them with stories from the many great people and companies with which he worked. The result is a blueprint for forward-thinking business leaders and managers that will help them create higher performing and faster moving cultures, teams, and companies.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2019 Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers

This is a eulogy, not a "playbook."

TL/DR: Apply good football coaching principles to the business world = help silicon valley companies make trillions.

If you're looking for leadership & growth insights, you'll get what you're looking for more densely & expediently from the likes of Peter Drucker or John Maxwell.

This book is ultimately a massive name-check storytelling session for silicon valley power players to eulogize their beloved coach. The best thing it accomplishes is animating the story of an inspirational, colorful leader, and perhaps show those who aren't in the know that coaching is necessary for growth. While these are both valuable things, they hardly amount to a "playbook" as the title suggests.

What really gets me, though, is the narrator. He does this awful thing where he feigns the accents of contributors to this book when he's reading their passages. Is it really necessary for this white guy to mock an Indian accent? These passages are written in English, same as the rest who aren't ESL speakers.

Great regarding the Coach’s life; Ok on how-to

This was a great book to learn about Bill Campbell but was just ok on the how-to aspects of being a great coach

Bill was an amazing coach. Book was very redundant

The Hard Things about Hard Things covers most of the same things and goes into more detail about specific topics, but this book is good if you're looking for more anecdotal evidence of how great a guy Bill Campbell was.

I didn't learn much from this book

I bought this book with high expectations as I have read the authors' previous book on "How Google works"

What I learned from this book can be put in two lines. Bill Campbell was a great coach. And it is good to have a coach for anybody especially for the top level executives of a company.

I would say it could have been compressed in to an online article, rather than a book of its own. I have no idea how this book is getting so many 5 stars.

Don’t bother, there are better books on leadership and coaching

This book is full of one sided anecdotes and fluffy stories. Reads more like a eulogy...

Disappointed. This was a eulogy...lacking substance

This book would have been so much better had the author actually simply spent one chapter discussing the bugs and bolts of HOW someone else could replicate Bill’s impact. I felt like I was working on a 1000 piece puzzle that was missing half the key pieces to finish the puzzle.

Transform your business through caring

Loved it! Care for your team and people and see your business transform. Listen now!

A eulogy

Seems like the book was written out of respect to losing someone so close to those startups. Not really a "leadership playbook"

Book is a drag, should have been 2 sentences

The book can be summarized in 2 sentence: Coaches show you your blindspots and sour-spots and they care about your success. They want you to realize your potential and this is how mentors and managers should be.

A Heart-centered Counterpoint

Everything in this book is actionable - it’s just different than most business or leadership books because Bill Campbell was different than most business people. The point to bring the heart, sincere relationship, “soft” skills, love, and family into the work place is well communicated and timely. It was difficult to distill the traits of such a enigmatic personality into a “playbook” I am sure but they did a good job.