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Come to Win: Business Leaders, Artists, Doctors, and Other Visionaries on How Sports Can Help You Top Your Profession
Multiple grand slam tennis champion and entrepreneur, Venus Williams and 46 of her colleagues, friends, and mentors deliver a volume of invaluable wisdom, motivation, and inspiration. Come to Win demonstrates how the principles of competitive athletics translate into business success. With contributions from a wide range of men and women who reached the very top of their games—including former CEO and bestselling author Jack Welch, fashion designer Vera Wang, actor Denzel Washington, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—Venus Williams’s Come to Win is a book every aspiring professional, coach, and sports enthusiast should read.
- GenresNonfictionSelf Help
384 pages, Hardcover
First published June 29, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 30, 2024
Sports 06/09/24 - 06/16/24
It's been about 2-months since I read this. I read this because my daughter Sophia shared her ambitions of being a competitive elite athlete with me. Before reading this book, I saw "King Richard" starring Will Smith, who played Richard Williams, the father of tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams. So, seeing a book by Venue Williams, caught my attention.
This book isn't really a story about Venus. Rather, it's a collection of stories. As the title says, we hear from leaders like Vera Wang (fashion), Condoleezza Rice (Secretary of State), Denzel Washington (Actor) who tribute their success to competitive sports.
One thing in America is that sports is extremely important. I didn't really appreciate this. Perhaps this is due to my upbringing that values academics over sports. I did play sports in our neighborhood baseball fields and ice rinks. We talked about about favorite teams and players and tried to mimic their moves and reenact their game. But sports takes money... especially when playing for your town's, city's or school's team. This wasn't something my parents (and many of the parents in my neighborhood) spent money on. So, we pretty much just played for fun and enjoyed good times growing up.
These leaders share how sports taught them discipline, hard work, team work, handing both success and disappointment, and accountability. Furthermore, they tend to hire and value co-workers who demonstrated excellence in sports. Knowing how important sports is now, I don't really know how I would have changed anything raising up my 2 daughters. We did expose them to sports like soccer, softball, gymnastics, and dance. I'm grateful that they could explore a range of activities to learn what they liked or did not like.
As for discipline, hard work, and other merits of sports, these can be gained in many ways too. Examples include theatre, speech-and-debate, and music.
The takeaway for me, isn't the specific sport or activity, but the journey. This sounds cliche. But they reflect the highs and lows of life - and how to define and reach goals - and ultimately grow.
It's been about 2-months since I read this. I read this because my daughter Sophia shared her ambitions of being a competitive elite athlete with me. Before reading this book, I saw "King Richard" starring Will Smith, who played Richard Williams, the father of tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams. So, seeing a book by Venue Williams, caught my attention.
This book isn't really a story about Venus. Rather, it's a collection of stories. As the title says, we hear from leaders like Vera Wang (fashion), Condoleezza Rice (Secretary of State), Denzel Washington (Actor) who tribute their success to competitive sports.
One thing in America is that sports is extremely important. I didn't really appreciate this. Perhaps this is due to my upbringing that values academics over sports. I did play sports in our neighborhood baseball fields and ice rinks. We talked about about favorite teams and players and tried to mimic their moves and reenact their game. But sports takes money... especially when playing for your town's, city's or school's team. This wasn't something my parents (and many of the parents in my neighborhood) spent money on. So, we pretty much just played for fun and enjoyed good times growing up.
These leaders share how sports taught them discipline, hard work, team work, handing both success and disappointment, and accountability. Furthermore, they tend to hire and value co-workers who demonstrated excellence in sports. Knowing how important sports is now, I don't really know how I would have changed anything raising up my 2 daughters. We did expose them to sports like soccer, softball, gymnastics, and dance. I'm grateful that they could explore a range of activities to learn what they liked or did not like.
As for discipline, hard work, and other merits of sports, these can be gained in many ways too. Examples include theatre, speech-and-debate, and music.
The takeaway for me, isn't the specific sport or activity, but the journey. This sounds cliche. But they reflect the highs and lows of life - and how to define and reach goals - and ultimately grow.
January 18, 2018
It was interesting to read about all of these individuals' experiences with sports, but I don't believe that playing sports is the only way that these individuals could have developed grit and determination and discipline. There's no science behind those claims, just anecdotal evidence. So, I denounce its attempt to sound so sure about their claims about sports and leading to success later in life. I'd be interested in reading a book comparing various extracurricular activities and their influences on individuals' development.
June 2, 2021
Love Venus’ story… many others were interesting. Unfortunately, too many were just trite, boringly self-aggrandizing, or basically ‘I’m a success because I went to Harvard/HBS/Harvard Law/Harvard Medical/Stanford…’ …I had the speed dialed up to 1.75x and I still could not finish the last few hours of the audiobook. My guess is any meaningful editing suffered from fear of puncturing the stratospheric egos / vanity of those profiled. Stick to the first third of the book and you will get the meat of it ;)
August 20, 2024
This was hard to read. The idea of the book is fantastic, but the chapters became repetitive. Additionally, some of the chapters were poorly written which I did not like
October 10, 2015
I was misled by the cover of this book. I thought it was a biography of tennis player Venus Williams. No, it is vignettes of 46 famous and successful individuals from business, politics, medicine, science and sport. It is about how sports in their childhood, teenage or college years made them the way they are and was a key ingredient of their success. I especially liked the story of fashion designer Vera Wang. I had no idea she was a competitive ice figure skater. The book was certainly informative and entertaining.
October 1, 2014
In the book come to win Venus faces conflicts in her health that set her back in her tennis career. Another conflict it that she started tennis a a late age so this causs a problem with her mind set and health because her body didn't have time to warm up to the sport before she went pro. This is a really inspiring book that I think any athlete should read. Is has helped me so much and when I finished it the inspiration hit me and u have been on an upswing.
April 14, 2016
For anyone that holds (or will hold) a title or a position of power or leadership, I would recommended this book to them. Even if you haven't, you'll get something out of this book plus you get to read about how sports helped influenced many of today's most successful people...
March 22, 2012
In spite of the cheap trick that it was actually a Venus Williams book, the leadership anecdotes were valuable pearls of wisdom.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews