Come To Win

Author  Venus Williams

Reviewed by Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA

HarperCollins Publishers

Hardcover: 357 pages

The game of tennis has produced its fair share of worthy champions in both the men and ladies circuit. A number of these champions such as Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Rod Laver, Serena Williams, Boris Becker, Martina Navratilova etc have written autobiographies chronicling their journey from fresh tennis upstarts to multiple Grand Slam Champions.

In writing “Come To Win”, which was released during the 2010 Wimbledon Championship, Venus Williams, the seven times Grand Slam champion takes a different route from her other professional colleagues. Unlike the autobiographies of her other professional colleagues, “Come To Win” is a compilation of Venus interview of forty-six successful people in which she documents the contribution of sports in their various professional careers. The people interviewed are achievers in a variety of fields including politics, business, medicine, sports, science, arts, and media. Venus essentially seeks answers to the following questions: How can sports help you in your profession? What principles that inspired you towards success as an athlete are helpful in your career? Are the skills learnt in sports transferable? What role did sports play in your development as a child?

Some of the people Venus interviews include Sir Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Group), Bill Clinton (former US President), Denzel Washington (Oscar award winning actor), Philip Knight (Nike co-founder and Chairman), Irene Rosenfield (CEO of Kraft Foods), Billie Jean King (multiple Grand Slam Winner), Condoleezza Rice (former US Secretary of State), Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) etc.

All these people interviewed share two things in common- First, at one point in their lives, they were actively engaged in some form of competitive sports activity. Second, they are all motivated, confident and successful individuals who have applied the skills learnt from their earlier sporting activities to their professional careers and day-to-day living.

The book is divided into eight parts, with each part containing a series of interviews. Venus begins each interview with a quote from the interviewee, followed by a short biography and then the interview. Though the format of each chapter is not in a Q&A format, however, each chapter spells out how the contributors got involved in sports and how the lessons learnt playing sports have helped in their careers.

This book would be of benefit to a number of people. For instance parents can learn the importance of getting their children actively engaged in sports. Denzel Washington notes that as a result of his own active engagement in sports, he encourages his children get involved in sports as it keeps them busy. He say “when you are young, you want to fit in somewhere…you are going to fit in with the stars, the jocks, the Goths, the drug heads…I just felt it was important for my children to stay busy”.  Sports also improve children’s self-confidence and self-esteem, it teaches them humility and mitigates against child obesity. Some of the contributors note a link between sports involvement and academic achievement as children learn from sports, the values of discipline, focus and persistence, which are essential in academics excellence.

Another useful information that comes from the book is the beneficiary impact of sports on females. Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay notes that sports can give little girls confidence. Furthermore, women who have engaged in sports often develop a competitive spirit which enables them to thrive in a competitive business world that is often dominated by men. Soledad O’Brien, the CNN journalists also notes that sports helps ladies to get comfortable with their bodies. She says “I really feel comfortable in my body, and I think sports got me there. I never had any of the eating-disorder type issues a number of my friends had because I believed my body had a totally other purpose”

The contributors also discuss other lessons from sports, which they have been able to apply to their careers. Some of these lessons that I found noteworthy include:

• Sports help in developing soft skills such as teamwork, managing people, managing and maintaining various relationships and understanding other people’s perspective.
• One learns how to accept losses and learn from the losses to improve performance. A number of the contributors note that they learnt more from their losses than their victories.
• Execution and strategy are important in both sports and business.
• Discipline, preparation and extra effort are all key ingredients for success.
• Sportsmanship and integrity are very important in business and sports. Winning at all costs is not winning.
• In sports and in life, there will always be another chance to prove yourself.
• Unspectacular preparation yields spectacular results.

There are also some very remarkable quotes such as “When you win, don’t crow. When you lose, don’t cry” – Bill Bradley; “If you don’t know how to lose, you will never know how to win” – Jack Welch; “if you don’t do your absolute best, you can’t expect to achieve anything different from what anybody else has done”- Sarina Bratton; ….”Golf is a lot like life. You get breaks you don’t deserve, both ways. You have to learn to make the most of the good breaks and shake of the bad ones” –Bill Clinton

The book also details a number of skills developed in sports, which are transferable to other areas of life. Skills such as focus, teamwork, persistence, resilience, continuous improvement, discipline, hard work, sportsmanship, visualization, coping with pressure etc are all discussed in detail in this book.

In conclusion, I recommend getting this book as it helps improve one’s understanding of management, helps one learn about the relevance of sports in business, day-to-day living and in the workplace. It would also help one understand the importance of sports in a child’s development. If you are not currently engaged in any sporting activity, this book may even inspire you to get your jogging shoes and start running or get involved in other forms of sporting activity.

With this book now published, the world still awaits Venus autobiography; however, producing an autobiography could be a bit challenging for Venus as sister Serena has written her own autobiography (see

https://zangodare.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/serenareview/ for my review of Serena’s book), which could contain events that are likely to overlap with what Venus would want to say. Only time will tell whether Venus will write her autobiography in the foreseeable future.