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 1325: “WhatsApp With That?”

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“In Christ Jesus, then I have reason to be proud of my work for God.”

The news broke yesterday afternoon that Facebook is buying “WhatsApp” for $19 billion.  Yes, $19B!.  “WhatsApp (up) with that?”, you might ask about WhatsApp getting that type of valuation.  Well, let’s see, they have 450MM users and they add 1MM new users a day.  And, they also have a revenue model of $.99/ year for each user, after a one year free trial.  What’s kinda cool about this 50 person team is that lots of people knew about WhatsApp, but not that many people knew about them from a bragging and boasting perspective.  This wasn’t a group of people who were the headlined in blogs and conferences as “the next big thing”.  They just went about their business, building something extraordinary until, bam!, the unimaginable happened. There is a lesson in here for all of us.  Yes, we have to market.  Yes, we have to ensure that we are known and recognized, but more so we just have to be awesome at what we set out to do, and as the one of the oldest sayings goes, “The cream will rise to the top”.

We learn in much of the New Testament about what the Apostle Paul did a a spreader of the Good News.  As the Associate Pastor at my church, said this past weekend, “Paul was an entrepreneur as he started and grew church after church, in land after land after land.”  Yes he was, and with his works, he led.  Paul was proud of his work because he could see God working in each place that he went.  But, Paul was not a boaster.  He didn’t go back among those who he once worked and bragged about what he was doing.  He just went about doing it and we still read, write and talk about him and his works today.  Our workplaces don’t need any more boasters or braggarts. We wouldn’t be looking like or acting like Christ and Paul if we were one of those.  If we go about our work in the same way of excellence that we are taught through Paul and Jesus, then we will have people around us wondering what’s up with them?  That then becomes our time to share!

Reference: Romans 15:17 (New Living Translation)