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 1281: While Not Everything, Timing Matters!

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“But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law.”

I was lunching in Los Angeles last week with someone who said to me, “Gosh, if you guys were doing SNOCAP now, you’d be sitting pretty.”  SNOCAP was the company I ran from 2005- 2008 that was yes, ahead of its’ time.  And yes, this former music attorney was right; if we were now running that company it would be very important in the scheme of what is happening right now within the industry.  But, this is 2013, not 2008 and indeed timing made a difference. From my business experience, it is easy to be late, a lot harder to be early and really difficult to be right on time. But, that is what we have to strive to do with our products and services.  Business ideas that come too late are worthless.  Those that come too early are expensive and ignored.  Those that come just at the right time when the market is accepting and ready, well, those are the ones that we remember.  Each of us likely have something we are considering “rolling out”, either externally, or even internally.  The question we must ponder and be able to answer, is this the right timing?  It’s not easy to answer, but it is a question that must be answered and addressed honestly and boldly. Otherwise, we might be setting ourselves up for disappointment and/or failure.

There is no way we can know why God chose a little over 2000 years ago to send Jesus.  Nor can we know when His timing will be for Jesus to return to the earth.  What we can know and be assured of is that God has something the rest of us only wish we could always have; perfect timing.  The world waited for Jesus to appear the first time, but that timing left an indelible mark on the world.  We are waiting again, and it will happen and and when it does, the timing will again be perfect.  We just have to be willing to wait on perfection.  Think about it this way, God has unlimited patience for us so why can’t we have patience for Him?  We like to try and rush or delay God’s timing. We are guilty of both. But instead, we sometimes need to sit in His timing to understand and realize His perfect ways.  We are anticipating and waiting for Christmas.  Let’s take these last few days of the year and lean into God’s timing in our lives. Let’s wait when we feel called to do so.  Let’s act when the call comes to act.  Let’s, without doubt, live into His timing for us.

Reference: Galatians 4:4 (New Living Translation(