Bill Campbell: The Trillion Dollar Coach and What He Actually Taught

Bill Campbell

Most business “coaches” today are just people who read The Lean Startup twice and have a Calendly link.

Bill Campbell? Different story.

He coached Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Bezos; you know, the small-time guys (kidding, in case you couldn’t tell). He never launched a product, but he helped build over a trillion dollars in enterprise value by coaching the people who did.

They called him “The Trillion Dollar Coach.”

And yeah, he’s worth learning from.

Let’s break down what actually made him legendary (and how you can steal some of it).

He coached humans, not companies

Bill’s core belief: people build companies, not the other way around.

He didn’t obsess over KPIs or funnel conversion rates. He obsessed over how teams communicated, how leaders made decisions, and whether or not execs were listening to each other.

“Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader.”

— Bill Campbell

That’s the heart of it. Great companies are just groups of people who trust each other enough to do hard things.

If you’re building anything: a startup, a team, even a solo biz with contractors, this matters more than your tech stack. He focused on frameworks, not hacks

He played inside the lines while the rest of the Valley chased lifehacks and growth loops.

And from this, those frameworks turned into systems that worked over time:

• Regular 1-on-1s: Not status updates. Real check-ins. How are they doing? What’s blocking them?

• Decision-making rules: Not consensus, but alignment. Once a call is made, everyone supports it.

• Feedback culture: Delivered fast, face-to-face, and with care. No vague Slack messages 3 days later.

This stuff sounds soft until you realize it’s what lets teams at Google scale without imploding.

If you want to start building this ideology into your workflow, read Hey Foster’s guide to onboarding remote teams. It’s how we keep remote teams sane when Slack gets chaotic.

Next up:

Loyalty > Leverage

Here’s the part no one talks about:

Bill went all-in on the people he worked with. He didn’t keep score. He didn’t hedge. He sat in on board meetings for free. He went to weddings. He coached the whole exec team, not just the CEO.

His model was simple: Trust first. Help always. Play the long game.

Like the Navy Seals. They don’t value the best players the most, they value the most trustworthy players the most.

Try this once and you’ll see how rare it is. Most people in business are transactional. Bill wasn’t. That’s why he was in every room that mattered.

So what can you steal from him?

Invest in your people

Whether that’s your first hire, your VA, or your cofounder.

Bill’s entire approach was rooted in one truth: business is personal. If you treat your people like interchangeable resources, they’ll act like it. But if you show up for them (genuinely), they’ll do things that blow your mind.

He did this with Google’s execs, with Steve Jobs, and even with random people at Apple who barely had titles. He cared not because it was a tactic, but because it’s how you build loyalty, retention, and creativity.

For you, that might mean asking your VA how their weekend was. Or giving your new hire space to fail and grow. Or backing your cofounder on a risky call even when you're unsure. Loyalty compounds. Most people miss that.

Build systems that scale with you

You don’t need a Notion dashboard with 42 properties.

You need repeatable, boring, working systems now.

Bill Campbell didn’t love systems for the sake of “efficiency.” He loved them because they gave teams breathing room to do the real work: strategy, feedback, vision. The point of a system is to take the repetitive junk off your plate so your brain can focus on what actually matters.

Start stupidly simple:

• A weekly 1-on-1 template

• An onboarding checklist

• A shared “decision doc” template in Google Docs

Then iterate. As your team grows, your systems mature with you. But if you wait until you’re overwhelmed, you’ll build systems in panic mode.

That’s how companies start to crack.

Hey Foster’s remote onboarding checklist is a great place to start if you’re even thinking about hiring.

Don’t lead from the spreadsheet. Lead from the heart.

Bill wasn’t anti-data. The man understood numbers. But he knew something most leaders forget: people don’t follow Excel sheets. They follow energy.

Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating a space where answers can emerge. Where people feel safe to speak, try, fail, and own their work.

You can’t spreadsheet that. You can’t AI-generate it. It’s built moment by moment, conversation by conversation.

This is the stuff no one tells you on startup Twitter. It’s not about managing resources. It’s about leading relationships. And if you do it right, you create a team that’s resilient, loyal, and 10x more capable than the one you micromanaged with KPIs.

Bottom line: The spreadsheets are important. But the soft stuff?

Surprisingly, that’s what scales.

If you want more, the book “Trillion Dollar Coach” by Eric Schmidt & co is actually worth the read. It’s not a ghostwritten fluff piece. It’s a field manual.

And if you’re doing this all solo right now? Start with one habit. Maybe it’s a weekly reflection or building one system that saves you one hour next week.

That’s how momentum starts.

If you just want to meet other smart, builder-types and get real-time help, join our private founder community. It’s like having a coach in your pocket (without the invoice).

Reply if this made you rethink how you lead.

Or if you just ordered the book. Or if you are the coach and needed this reminder.

See you Monday,
Lundin
Still taking coaching from dead legends