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 1296: But First Let Me…

“But Jesus told him, ‘Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.’”

How many times have we heard, “I’ll get to that, but first let me…”?  How often do we actually think this way and after we have had gone through all of the “first let me” options, we find that we haven’t gotten anything important done.  “First let me” is a dangerous thing and can cause disastrous hesitations.  How do we keep from these moments happening from us?  Steven Covey wrote a great book. “First Things, First”.  By having our priorities defined and held firm, we can remove the “First let me” syndrome.  Think about how many times you have let something else get in the way and distract the important from getting done.  If you can think of one example, that’s one too many.

Jesus called on individuals to follow Him and he heard more than once, “But First Let Me”, and therein lies the issue.  This year, today, we will be challenged to put Christ first and it won’t be surprising to anyone that we will say to ourselves, “But First Let Me”. Here is the good news, God keeps coming back to us and inviting us to follow Him and walk with Him daily.  Can today be the day that we don’t have any other firsts in front of Him?

Reference: Luke 9:62 (New Living Translation)