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 849: While We Are Waiting

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May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done here on earth, just as it is in heaven.”

Business is by nature impatient. No where do I see that like I do in the world of Private Equity. Private equity and Venture Capital are different and also similar. Both are other people’s money. Both are outside influences on a business and on the leaders of the business. Both are in a hurry, but for different reasons. Venture Capital is in a hurry because they are usually racing to be first or largest to market. Venture Capital is like feeding the 16 year old boy as much food and nutrients as the boy can take to keep him growing as fast as he can. Venture Capital creates and expands. Private Equity is different. Private Equity is extremely impatient and will go to extremes to pare and prune back a business to see if the new shoots will grow the business more efficiently with a greater return to the shareholder. Rather than feed, Private Equity starves and limits the overall intake in hope that “fat” will be reduced so muscle is what is left. I have friends in both industries and I must say that the harder job is Private Equity because the draconian actions necessary to cost-cut to increase shareholder value is very, very difficult. The two ways of business building, with neither being better than another, are still both impatient in their own way and demand founders/teams to bend to the will and pace of the investor.

Jesus teaches us to pray for the Kingdom of God to come soon. We are to desire and reach to God for Him to deliver the Kingdom. However, in the next sentence, Jesus tells us to be patient and wait for the will of God to be done. There is much in life that we can influence to go our way, but the will of God is not one of those. This we must trust to happen and then follow the path that God puts in front of us. Maybe in this we are more like Venture Capitalists that we are to be as additive to God’s will as we can to assist in His will being done. And, still we are to be like those in Private Equity in paring and removing the distractions and the superficial that distract or take us away from the main reason we are here. Regardless of the similarities or the differences, we are to learn and have patience to allow God to work in our lives to His will, not ours. This week, let’s have a look at who is leading whom? Is it us trying to pace and lead God, or have we surrendered enough to let Him take the lead?

Reference: Matthew 6:10 (New Living Testament)