Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 1348: Closer Than It Seems

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“When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied.”

Success and failure share a trait; they both, like the images in the right-hand side mirror of our cars, can seem closer than they really are.  Success can feel close, but might still be a ways away so we have to stick with it, don’t take our foot off the gas, and don’t assume that we can change course before we achieve the success that we are trying to achieve.  Failure, on the other hand, can feel so close that we start to get fearful and paralyzed of what might happen next, when we are still far from failing.  The truth is that success and failure are located just about the same distance away from where we are.  We can’t over anticipate either nor overreact to what we encounter along the way.  I have seen too many people who make decisions based on not accurately knowing where they are on the road to either success or failure.

God can seem close and far, but here’s what we have to remember: He is always closer to us than He appears.  What that means is that if we just allow Him to be as close to us as He desires, that it just gets better and better.  We can’t go wrong in that He wants to inhabit every part of our day, our thoughts, our actions and our attitudes.  As we work through today, and the meetings, phone calls, emails, etc., take a moment between each activity and ask Him to come closer.  He will and the closer we get to Him, the more great and wonderful things can happen.  When Moses got closer to God, Moses could hear God call His name. Now how cool would that be? Why don’t we find out?!

Reference: Exodus 3:4 (New Living Translation)