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 917: The Three Steps to Quitting

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“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good.  At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”

I was at a high school graduation party last weekend in New York for our youngest nephew and I happened to sit aside one of the family’s long term friend who is now in his junior year of college.  He is double majoring in acting and business.  I joked with him that they were interchangeable and that his first major in acting might get him to the CEO job faster than the business degree.  He is concerned that he won’t be able to make a living being an actor so he wants a fallback.  At the same time he wants to chase the dream and go as far as he can before he quits and falls back. My advice to him was to use my “Three steps to quitting” process.  First, I advised him to seek out the best friend he had in the world who would give him unconditional love, support and advice and who was also someone he would listen to no matter what and was beyond reproach.  Once he knew who that person was, he was to go to him/her and ask them to be ready because he was going to make them a part of his three steps to quitting.  What he needs them to do is the first two times he comes to them and says about his acting career, “I’m done, I quit”, to tell him to “Shut up and quit whining”, “Get back on the horse”, “Get back in the ring”, whatever it takes to make him not give up and give it another go.  And he was to listen to them each time.  And then, if there is a third time, this chosen person was to to respond to his their, “I quit”, with a hug , unconditional love and praise for not quitting the first two times, and then help him move on into another career.  This young man looked at me when I gave him this advice and you could almost see the weight come off his shoulders and with a smile, he said, “I know exactly who the right person is for me”.  The three steps to quitting avoid us making the permanent decision to a temporary problem too soon.  Consider your own three steps before anything is ever quit.

“…If we don’t give up”, Paul says to us. The operative word is “if”.  God doesn’t want us to be quitters and we shouldn’t be if we want to live in His likeness.  He has never quit on us or quit on anyone or anything so why should we?  For believers, I would add another step to a decision about quitting and call it the ‘three and three steps” and that is to take any and all decisions first to the Three who will always lead us in the right direction; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and trust that direction before reaching to another person.  In fact, we can never go wrong if we ensure that all our decisions are guided by stepping towards His wisdom before all others. Of course there are some things in life that are better quit than continued, but let’s be sure that we are using all of our resources and relying on the right advice and wisdom before we just make the decision on our own.

Reference: Galatians 6:9 (New Living Translation)