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 2691: Gourmet Salt

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“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.”

The global market for gourmet salt was $1.1 billion in 2016 with the next decade of growth expected to top $1.5 billion. While we all have some preference for salt (some of us too much) there is nothing like tasting that salt which, is very “special”.  The definition of gourmet is a loose one, but it’s been said, you know it when you taste it.  We need flavor.  We need preservation.  We need what salt does to our body’s chemistry.  And when someone figures out how to take the basic needs and build it into “gourmet” then they have figured out how to get $1.5 billion out of the pockets of consumers.  It begs the question on what do we have in our business that with a little rethinking we can make it really special, to the point that people will pay more, go out-of-the-way for the experience or product and then go tell others about it?

Are we not to be God’s gourmet salt of the earth?  That is to say, are we not today to figure how we address the specific need of someone we know as if we were made to be there just for them?  If we think about it that way, then God will fashion us just to the flavor that is needed today. He is the great chef of our lives, yes?

Reference: Matthew 5:13 (New Living Translation)