Rusty Rueff is a prominent business executive and advisor with extensive experience in technology and the arts. He served as CEO at SNOCAP, Inc. until it’s sale in 2008. And he was an executive vice president at Electronic Arts, overseeing global HR and Corporate Communications. Prior to that, he spent over a decade at PepsiCo, culminating as Vice President of International HR, and he also worked at Pratt and Whitney. Rusty has held significant roles in public service, including as the Coordinating National Co-Chair of Technology for President Obama’s campaign.
And he’s a member of the President’s Advisory Committee for the Arts at The Kennedy Center. He is a co-founder of Alioth talent and has been involved with startups like Glassdoor and HireVue. Academically, he holds an Honorary Doctorate from Hanover College, an M.S. in Counseling and a B.A. in Radio and TV from Purdue University, where he’s also a benefactor of the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art and Performance.
Rusty is a published author and a co-host of The Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, residing in California and Rhode Island with his wife and their French Bulldog.
Questions
· Could you share with us just a little bit about your journey, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?
· You recently published a book called The Faith Code. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about that book and just kind of what value you were looking to bring forward when you wrote and published this book?
· So, in terms of helping, so you said the book helps people right mind, body and soul, and they all are connected. How do you get them to that point to recognize that they have to balance it out in order to be able to be the best at what they’re doing?
· Could you also share with us what’s the one online resource, tool, website or application that you absolutely can’t live without in your business?
· Can you also share with our listeners maybe one or two books that you would like to recommend? It could be a book that you’ve read a very long time ago, or even one that you’ve read recently, but it has had a profound impact on you, whether professionally or personally.
· Can you share with our listeners, what’s the one thing that’s going on in your life right now that you’re really excited about? Either something you’re working on to develop yourself or your people.
· Now, Rusty, can you share with our listeners, where can they find you online?
· Now, before we wrap our episodes up Rusty, we always like to ask our guests, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote if for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?
Highlights
Rusty’s Journey
Me: Could you share with us just a little bit about your journey, just a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today?
Rusty shared that he’ll try to be very concise about it, because his career and his life has been very much like sailing. Have you ever been sailing?
Me: That’s the one with the with like piece of material hanging, and it doesn’t have a motor. I’ve never been on that one, that one scares me. Yeah, travels.
Rusty shared that it moves you from place to place as you tack with the wind, you follow the wind. And sailboats don’t go straight, they actually go in diagonals to get out to where you want to get to, that’s why you move back and forth. And his career has been very much that. He started off in entertainment, radio and television, his father was a radio and television personality, that’s all he wanted to be. He started doing that, realized that’s not really what he wanted to do.
And he went into business, and he spent a fair amount of time in the human capital space, two years at Pratt Whitney, 10 years at PepsiCo, particularly, doing talent management. And then he got a chance to come back to entertainment and use some of that human capital experience and join Electronic Arts (EA) back in 1998 and they were growing so fast. They were a young company, anything that wasn’t sort of nailed down, you got an opportunity to work on. And so, he got this broad range of experiences that allowed him to tap into the past, but also learn a lot of things that he hadn’t done before, like mentioned, corporate communications, government affairs, all of our internal facilities and global real estate operations and so.
And he also had this background in music, so he was able to have an influence on the company and how they use music and video games, and that was exciting to him. And he got to meet a number of people in the music industry. And he got recruited out of EA to actually go and be a CEO of a company called SNOCAP, which was founded by Sean Fanning of Napster Fame or Infamy, depending upon how old you are. And he was able to do that for three years, go through the whole venture cycle, raise a bunch of money, ended up doing a deal with the most important music website at that time, which was called MySpace, which nobody really remembers anymore.
Me: Oh gosh, yeah, that was before Facebook.
Rusty agreed, it was before Facebook. And then that opened up opportunities for him to join the Grammy Foundation, become the chairman of the Grammy Foundation Board, and in 2008, they sold that company right before the world fell apart. And then that gave him a new tack to take, as the wind blew, it started doing a lot more things in the arts and philanthropy, and as well as also, he was invited by President Obama to be the Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama for his 2012 re-elect. Out of that, was appointed to the Kennedy Center.
And along the way, he’s written a couple of books. Wrote a book on talent in 2006 called Talent Force, and then just this last year, published another book called The Faith Code, which is about how to bring your not only mind and body, but also your spirit to the workplace. And so, he’s gotten to do a lot of interesting things, and he advise, he invest in companies. He sits on a number of different venture backed boards, and was on the founding board of Glassdoor, joined them back before they even had a PowerPoint back in the day. So, he’s been very blessed and fortunate to be able to do lots of different things.
About Rusty’s Book – The Faith Code
Me: Now, you mentioned that you recently published a book called The Faith Code. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about that book and just kind of what value you were looking to bring forward when you wrote and published this book?
Rusty shared that what had happened is, right after the iPhone came out, and they came with the App Store, and if you remember back then, there was a very prolific advertising campaign by Apple said there’s an app for that, because there was an app for everything. And he was back at his alma mater at Purdue, and he was speaking to the business school there, and he gave this presentation said, “Are you building your life as a platform or an app?”
And that metaphor being the platform, being those things in life that are consistent, dependable, you can count on it always being there, you could build other things on top of that, like a platform would do, like when we open up our iOS or Android, our phones, our devices, our computers, they boot up the same way every day, lots of things can go on. They need to be updated, but they’re not updated every day, and we depend upon them.
There are things in our life that are platform elements, like our relationships, deep relationships, our values, our principles, those passions, things that we really love and care about, and things like taking care of our mind, taking care of our body and taking care of our spirit. And so, he put that out and he said, or are we building our life as an app?
And a life has lots of different apps, they have some really important ones, like our jobs, like where we go to school, like where we live, the people that we tangentially associate with, and then we have a bunch of likes in our life, like our sports teams and our politics and all, those are all good, there’s no problem with those. But those are also things that come and go, and those are things that easily crash, and those are things that might be popular one day, gone the next, important to us one day, not important to us the next, and that if we build our life on those things, and they crash or they get taken away from us, we can find ourself lost.
And so, he gave this speech, and for a decade plus, whenever he would go back to Purdue, he would run into anybody, and still to this day, people will say, “I still think about that. I think about building my life as a platform or an app.”
Well, he extended that out, along with the pastor of his church, who he has a very great relationship with they said what if they just take one element of that platform and build out that metaphor, and they look at the element of faith and then decide, well, what kind of source code are we using for that? What kind of framework are we building around that? What kind of algorithms are we running in our life so that that platform grows and stays strong and becomes something that we can count on for the rest of our life?
Because he’s always said that the human experiences is that we will decline physically, we will decline mentally, no way around it, there’s no way around it. But the only thing that we can actually not decline in but grow beyond ourselves, even to the moment of our death, is our spirituality, like our faith can get stronger each day while these other things decline or deteriorate.
And so, what they do in the book is they go deep into that platform side, and then they say, okay, but there are apps of life out there. How do you apply that platform into those apps? But you let the platform, your faith code, drive your decisions in those other areas, like your career and like relationships and how you want to spend your time and that’s the premise of the book.
Now, it’s been a lot fun. What is great is that they found that people of all faiths, and people who wouldn’t say that faith is important to them, are getting something out of the book. They’re getting something out of the book because they’re saying, look, I recognize, especially as we age, I recognize this phenomenon that my mind, body and spirit, I am better when they’re an isosceles triangle.
Like when I am balancing them out, but when I ignore one, or if I ignore this idea of my spirit, in those moments when I have nothing to draw upon, or when I’m in a crisis, or I don’t have friends around me, where do I go? And unfortunately, without the spirit, your mind can take you places that you don’t want it to go. And your body can be affected by that, high times of stress, or lack of self-confidence, all of those things can start to play, and that’s where spirit can make a difference.
Me: That sounds like a great book, I’m going to have to get a copy.
Balancing the Mind, Body and Soul in Order to be the Best
Me: So, in terms of helping, so you said the book helps people right mind, body and soul, and they all are connected. And in customer experience, I talk about it all the time with my participants. I believe it’s so important that you take care of yourself like get enough sleep, eat properly and exercise. I think those three things are really important. And people will say to me, so Yanique, if I walk up and down in my office, is that considered exercise? But unfortunately, from most of the articles and subject matter experts in the nutrition and exercise area, your heart rate needs to get pumping to a particular sets of beats per minute for at least 15 to 20 minutes per day for it to be classified as exercise for you to be really get moving.
And so, how do you get people to that place? I know you mentioned that the book is applicable to people whatever their faith might be, whatever area they’re in, but how do you get people to recognize that in order for them to really perform at the best in every aspect of their life, they have to pour into all those areas that you had mentioned.
And the spirit is very important, because it’s kind of what drives us, right? It’s inside, you can’t see, but you can feel it, and you can know when you’re off, like when you’re having an off day. It could be maybe you ate something that’s not sitting with you so well, so it makes you feel lethargic, or maybe you normally get six to seven hours of sleep per night, you only got four so you’re feeling extra exhausted. How do you get them to that point to recognize that they have to balance it out in order to be able to be the best at what they’re doing?
Rusty shared that it’s a great question. So, he has this belief that people change in only one of two ways, so they change when they are invited to change. And what Yanique is doing right now is she’s inviting people on the podcast and others to change, to improve yourself. In order to improve, you got to change something, you got to work a little harder at something, you got to be a little more efficient, you got to be a little more productive, you got to get rid of distraction, you got to change something. And we’re invited to change every day, but the human condition is one that is resistant to change.
We habituate very easily, and all he has to do is ask somebody the question, we could do it ourselves, to say, “Okay, how did we boot up this morning?” And what he means by that is, what was the routine that you went through to get ready, when you got out of bed, to the moment that you’re sitting here? The order that you brushed your teeth, you washed your face, you took a shower, or you flushed your teeth, whatever you do, it was likely the same today as it was yesterday.
And when somebody decides that if I drive to work every day, or I drive to school every day without some situation, I tend to habituate and go the same way every day. And it’s just part of the routine of life that is not bad, because it allows us to have predictability, and it allows us to be able to, just like our computers booting up the same way. If they booted up randomly every day and this app came up and that app didn’t, it would drive us crazy. We’d be back at the Apple store going take this piece of junk back, fix it. So, we do our best to try to routinely boot up every day, although we get distractions and things get in our way.
So, we’re invited to change and improve all the time, but it’s hard until there’s a situation. When there’s a situation, one that throws us back on our heels, that scares us, when the doctor says, “I’ve been talking to you about exercise, but let me show you. Let me tell you what just showed up. We’re seeing that calcium buildup. We’re seeing blood pressure that’s too high. We’re seeing diabetes, we’re seeing all of these things that have now shown up.” All of a sudden, you stop, and you go, “Whoa, it’s time to change.” And so, what he would say to you is, when you ask that question about what are we doing, is we need to get that each one of us do our own work on our belief set, because actions come from changes of belief. And we get down and in our belief set to say we need to do something different to be better, to improve, to be more efficient, more productive, better relationships, any of those things.
When we finally get to that situation, we’ll go down and we’ll say, “Oh, okay, you know what? I can find the time. I can find the motivation. I can find those that want to help me, that can help me be more accountable in these areas.” But if we don’t get all the way down there and realize that there’s a situation coming or we need to respond to the innovation, we will remain the same, and we’re living organisms, if we’re not growing, we’re dying. We don’t stay the same as a living organism. That weed out there grows better than the flower. So, it knows how to grow to do its thing that it wants to do. It’s not good, but it’s doing its thing. We have to grow. We have to grow. And so, he would have people, your listeners step back, question what it is that they believe that they really need to do? Think about the invitation that they’re being made to have, and then situationally, start to go through and say, “How can I make this change?”
He has a great story of these two entrepreneurs. He watched them in a panel, he wishes he could remember their names, but they were young guys, and one was telling the story to the other one that said a few years ago, I had to tell my co-founder that he was a terrible co-founder, and he had responded like, “What do you mean? I work like crazy. I give my whole life to this organization.” And he goes, “Yeah, that’s the problem. The problem is you’re here 19 hours a day, it feels like. You use caffeine and nicotine to keep you going, right? So, you’re always jacked up on caffeine and Red Bulls and you smoke to your cigarettes like crazy. You don’t work out, and it all shows in the stress that you bring to work, and you’re frazzled and all of that. And so, you’re not a good co-founder.”
And he took that to heart. He got himself off of the caffeine as best he could, he didn’t come all the way off, but he took it way down. It wasn’t a driver anymore. He quit smoking. He actually put time on his calendar every day, in the middle of the day to go and work out and go to the gym. Lost a bunch of weight, came back a year later…sat down with his co-founder, says, “Am I better?” He goes, “Oh, not better. You’re awesome.”
And part of it was the example that he was setting, because there is a true thing called the “Shadow of the Leader.”
· We look at the leader in a company, and we go, well, they got there for some reason. So, what is it about them that I need to do what they do?
· Is it how they conduct themselves in meetings?
· Is it how they ask questions?
· Is it what they read?
· Is it how they speak?
· Is it how they treat others?
· You’re looking for all those cues, how many hours they’re in the office?
You’re looking for all those cues, and you will fall into the shadow. So, what you do has a huge effect on so many people that you don’t even know. So, you need to change. You’re changing not only for yourself, but you’re changing for others. And that’s a good motivator.
App, Website or Tool that Rusty Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business
When asked about online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Rusty shared that now it’s ChatGPT. Then they were talking at the beginning of their time before the recording about Perplexity AI and there’s other large language models, generative AI tools that are coming. He will just say this, if you’re not experimenting and not using generative AI to help you think about your work and how to improve or how to be curious, like, he’s done with Google searches. Now, can he get everything that he needs out of ChatGPT, yet? No. And so, you end up defaulting back into other things, but this idea of a broader learning, co-pilot, as Microsoft would like to call it, or a companion is becoming almost indispensable for him.
Me: Yeah, because it’s working smarter, right?
Rusty agreed, it’s working smarter without becoming lazier, right? So, you can find yourself into that trap pretty easily, it’s like, well, do I need to do the critical thinking, or am I just going to let ChatGPT or Perplexity, or any of the other ones do the critical thinking for me?
That’s a danger, we got to watch out for that. But when it comes to efficiency and productivity, we’re in a brand-new world, not to overstate the word. It is a revolutionary thing that’s happening right in front of us and it’s going to feel for us and for the next generation as a watershed moment, just like the smartphone was, just like the internet was before that, it’s amazing. It’s just going to be amazing.
Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Rusty
When asked about books that have had an impact, Rusty shared that as you can imagine, a person who wrote the book called The Faith Code, he’s a Bible reader, so he’ll park that and tell you that that is a source code that never changes, but we change, so therefore it can feel new every time you read it. So, he’ll park that. But he’s going to give two other books. A book that he read in his early years of work, actually his first professional job at Pratt and Whitney, because his boss gave it to him and told him that he must read it and that they would read it together, almost like a book club. You have to understand that at this time, he was probably in his late 50s, eighth grade education, but he’d gone to work on machine shop floor, worked himself up to becoming a manager, then a supervisor, and then a director in the company, and he gave him the book, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and he devoured it. He went deep into objectivism. He thought it was almost biblical, and in the learnings it gave him until he figured out that it was promoting self-dependence, extreme capitalism, take care of those who perform and produce, and leave the others behind.
It took him a long time to figure out that that book was very dangerous, and that it had a profound influence in two ways in his life. One, it taught him a lot, but it also taught him what not to be and so, if anybody’s going to read it, you read it, but then you just have to step back and look at it. Because that extreme capitalism, the story in her whole philosophy, can be dangerous, at least in his mind.
But the one that is fantastic is What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. And Kevin Kelly was early in the internet, really early. One of the first online resources was a thing called The Well, he was part of creating that. He was a co-founder at Wired Magazine, and still is a called the chief Maverick there, still writes. But he wrote this book What Technology Wants, and his hypothesis is, is that technology is a kingdom, just like we have seven other kingdoms. This is like the eighth kingdom that is always moving in life, and it evolves and it will move with or without us, and you go, “Oh, that’s crazy. How could that be?” Well, then tell me, how is it that Alexander Graham Bell in America created the telephone just about the same time that someone in Europe created the telephone, but they had never met, and there was no way to know that either one of them were doing that. How does that happen?
How does it happen that four or five ideas all come to market at the same time, and we go, “Oh, what was that about?” They weren’t copying, it’s like technology moves, it moves with our knowledge and our education and what we see in the realm of things, people see things, and go, there’s a need for that. And so, the technology, if we study it, we can actually be one step ahead of it. And if you’re one step ahead of it, or trying to be one step ahead of it, you will be a faster learner, you’ll be around the corner when other people haven’t quite got gotten there yet. And if you really want to know what technology is going to be, read science fiction, because there’s nothing that shows up that somewhere, someplace hasn’t been written in science fiction. And so, he has a very good friend who’s a venture capitalist, and that’s all he reads, no business books, nothing else. He just reads science fiction all the time, because that’s where the future is, that’s where the future is going to be.
Me: When you said science fiction just now, I remember when I was small, and I used to watch this cartoon on TV called The Jetsons, and they would video call each other and I was just like, what is happening here, are these people crazy?
Rusty agreed and flying cars that were piloted by somebody else that all George Jetson did was get in the thing and it took off and went. Come to San Francisco and right around in Waymo. Taxis that there are no drivers, not too far before they come off the ground. It’s an evolution, what technology wants, technology will get.
Me: That’s true and we might not be here 100 years from now, but can you just imagine what’s going to exist 100 years from now?
Rusty shared that he had a stepfather who lived to be 94 and he died about, probably about 15 years ago now. So, think about 94, 15 years ago. He would talk about the things that he saw in his lifetime, he could remember seeing like a combustion engine car for the first time, all the way through, watching men walk on the moon to the space shuttle, to the internet, he didn’t see self-driving cars yet, but he saw battery cars. It’s like, wow, all in span of one lifetime. So, it’s not going to slow down, so if you’re born today, not 94 probably 115 years of life, because it we may have that life expectancy by then, you’re showing up today, imagine what you’re going to see over the next 100 plus years.
What Rusty is Really Excited About Now!
When asked about something that he’s really excited about, Rusty shared that it’s coming up on one year of this book and it’s still going really well and they’re getting ready to do the audio version. So, they’ll be sitting down, it’ll be the first time that he’s been an author that he will actually have recorded his own audio book. So, he’s really psyched about that. He thinks that’s going to be really interesting to see how that comes out. So, he’s excited about that.
He has some personal goals that he’s working on. He always keeps mind and body and spirit goals, and so, he will finish his last marathon, he’s ran 9, he will finish his 10th one, get to the start line, which is the hard thing, and then finish his last marathon in this coming year. And he says last, because 10 is enough. You don’t need more than that, or at least he doesn’t. So, he’s excited about some of those physical things that he’s got going on.
And then as far as some of the other things, he’s got some new companies that he’s working with. He’s got one that he’s really, really excited about that finds random non-standard data about humans that they volunteer to put forward to do matching of experiences in ways that hasn’t been really done before. And he’s excited about that because he thinks where the world is right now, especially since the pandemic, we’ve become more withdrawn as humans. Again, we habituate so it’s a little harder to muster up, let’s go out on Thursday night, or let’s go do this, or let’s go see that.
And there was a futurist by the name of Faith Popcorn back in the 70s. And one of her futurist trends was cocooning. And she said, we will have everything. We’ll have all the technology. We’ll have everything we need, food will come to us, we won’t need to go out. So our socialization will become harder. And he thinks we’re seeing that. And he thinks the output of that, whether it be loneliness or depression or anxiety, is prevalent.
So, he thinks we have to find hooks and ways for people to want to socialize differently. And he thinks that that’s found in common interests. As it’s found in common personality, it’s found in those things that you go, “Oh, I’ve always been interested in race car driving, but I’ve never knew anybody else that was. But now I know two or three people that I’ve been connected to, and I think I’d like to have them come over to the house and we can watch Formula One together.” So, he’s excited about that.
And a few other companies he’s working on. So, nothing groundbreaking or world shaking, but he also thinks that that’s how life works. It’s one step at a time, one tack at a time. And the next thing you know, you’re on a new vector to something new.
Where can listeners find Rusty Online?
X – @RustyRueff
LinkedIn – Rusty Rueff
Instagram – @rustyrueff
Facebook – Rusty Rueff
Email – [email protected]
Website – https://rustyrueff.com
Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Rusty Uses
When asked about quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Rusty shared that he does and it’s on his wall that he’s carried with him since 1984. And it says, “There will be only one of you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself.”
And he draws upon that. In fact, he even drew upon it this morning. He was getting ready to do a Zoom call with a committee that he’s on, and they just don’t really quite know what they should be recommending next in this committee. And he knows what he thinks they should do. And he said to himself, “I got to fearlessly be myself. I’ve got to share my point of view.” By the way, he’ll leave this with the listeners. He was once taught, and he believes it with all his heart, that a point of view is worth 10 IQ points.
You go into a meeting, you’re with a committee, you’re with your boss, you’re with a customer and everything’s sort of like swirling around and somebody needs to have a point of view. Your point of view is worth 10 IQ points. And so many people don’t realize that if they just step forward with their point of view, other people will listen. And so, there will be only one of you for all time, fearlessly, fearlessly be yourself.
Me: Rusty, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think you brought great value to our listeners and it’s so important for people to recognize, I know the show is about customer experience, but I don’t think generally people can have a good experience if they themselves are not taking care of themselves. So, I think a lot of what you spoke about today can help anyone in any industry, regardless of whichever country or part of the hemisphere you’re living, to really pour into yourself in a very meaningful and intentional way that will create results that are astronomical for you, as you said, you have to make that decision, that’s something that you really have to commit to.
Rusty shared that he’ll leave this one last thought. Especially in customer service, if you can’t put a smile on your face or a smile in your voice, which is what’s your customers looking for on the other side, right? They want to hear a smile when they reach to you.
If you can’t put a smile on your face or a smile in your voice, then go ask yourself why, and then go figure out what do I need to do to make sure that I can. And you’ll be different. You’ll be unique.
And your head will pop up among all the rest when they look out. And people will recognize you, and all of a sudden, you’ll see your customer service ratings go up and other people will wonder why it’s because I found a way to have a smile in my voice or a smile on my face. So, it’s a game changer.
Me: And they do say a smile is worth more than a thousand words.
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Links
• What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
• Talent Force: New Manifesto for The Human Side of Business by Hank Stringer and Rusty Rueff
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