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 3K122: Establishing Value

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“When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!”

It’s hard to know exactly what something should cost. It should be lower or it should be higher.  Maybe, it is exactly what it should cost, but even then, we would like to have more value.  imagine you were Laszlo Hanyecz. Twelve years ago next month Laszlo was hungry.  So, he bought two pizzas.  He paid a premium for them because he wanted to purchase them using this thing called bitcoin.  He used 10,000 bitcoin, which was about $41 dollars in 2010.  I’m sure the pizza was good and he didn’t think any more about it.  Or, perhaps he thinks about it every day now as those two pizzas at 10,000 bitcoin would be worth about $476 million today.  So, at the time, Laszlo received what he thought was a value but a dozen years later I doubt he would say so.  Value changes and many times is determined in the wallet of the buyer.  Oh, in this story, Papa John’s Pizza took received payment of the bitcoin.  I’m suspecting someone within the company is also kicking themselves for not also holding onto the 10,000 bitcoin.

What would be of such value that we would be willing to sell everything we owned to be able to make the purchase and know it would then be ours forever?  Can we think of anything that valuable?  The Parables of Jesus make it clear that the value of our salvation and what Jesus sacrificed for us is of such value that our lives and all that we imagine them to be are not even a fraction of the value of what God has given us.  That should make us ask ourselves, what value will we put on the time that we work today if we don’t turn that work into at least one thing that brings glory to God?

Reference: Matthew 13:46 (New Living Translation)