Day 63:) The Legendary Silicon Valley Coach
Thousands of people gathered on the football field at the Sacred Heart School in California to honor the amazing personality. He died of cancer exactly 4 years back on April 18, 2016. The likes of the people who gather there were Larry Page, Sergey Bin, Tim Cook, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Brad Smit and many of the industry pioneers. Most of the people gathered there considered Bill a best friend.
Bill didn’t have much money during his college days, so he helped pay his education at Columbia University by driving cab. He was a very hard working and courageous student. He was a great American Football player. After graduation, he was appointed as the Head Coach in his alma mater. However, life had something else for him. The coaching didn’t turn out well because of lack of support from the administrations. He left the job and entered the business world at the age of 39 .
He started the new journey with J. Walter Thomson and thereafter worked in the following: Kodak, Apple, Go Corporation and lastly Intuit. He is the man behind the Apple’s most successful ad camping of all time. The 1984 Super Bowl Ad. The Board members rejected it, however he went ahead and aired it. Rest is history. He disagreed with board’s decision to remove Steve from Apple. He was rewarded for his loyalty when Jobs returned to the helm. He was made the board member of Apple Inc.
After giving up his CEO job at Intuit, he returned to his coaching days. But this time coaching the business executives. He is the most trusted person in the valley. He coached Larry, Sergey, Eric, Sundar and many Googlers and at the same time was serving as the board member of Apple. He never discussed about the products or told his coachees the solutions. He narrated them some stories and asked them to think more and come with up the solutions of their own. He had coached not only in Google but in many other companies like Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and more.
He boosted his coaches with immense confidence. They didn’t have so much faith in themselves, how much Bill had in them. He was full on energy, grit, focus and was brutally honest too. He never used his cell phones during the meetings. He practiced free fall listening and gave undivided attention to the presenter. He used to coach football team of Sacred Heart School every Sunday. One fine Sunday afternoon there was a call from Steve, all the children glanced over him to see his reaction. He simply saw the name and kept back in his pocket.
He had just one coaching principle to choose the coaches. He only coached the coachable ones. It didn’t matter where you are from, what you have done or what’s your position in the firm He never took a dime for his advices. After forcing many times, when he finally accepted some stocks from Google. He simply donated them to a charity. He had a very big heart.
It was not easy to get into his calendar. However, when he came to know about Steve’s illness. He visited him nearly daily to check on his health. He never entertained to be in limelight. That’s why very few people know about him. After all he is, “The Trillion Dollar Coach”. In case you are more interested to know about him, I highly recommend you read this book. The content in this write up has been taken from the above mentioned book.
Bill once said, “Think that everyone who works for you is like your kids. Help them course correct, make them better.”