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Unblock Success, Align Values with Ken Rusk · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom Jackobs: Welcome, heart-led heroes.
• 0:38
  Tom Jackobs: Today we're thrilled to introduce a true champion of change, Ken Rusk.
• 0:43
  Tom Jackobs: A bestselling author and entrepreneur.
• 0:46
  Tom Jackobs: Ken has navigated the seas of success with heart, humor, and a hefty dose of grit.
• 0:52
  Tom Jackobs: As we dive into his journey with Rusk Industries, we'll explore how he fosters a flourishing employee-centric culture while inspiring many to chase their own dreams.
• 1:01
  Tom Jackobs: So let's strap in for a spirited conversation on the Heart-Led Business Show.
• 1:06
  Tom Jackobs: Ken, welcome to the show.
• 1:08
  Ken Rusk: Thanks.
• 1:08
  Ken Rusk: I appreciate it.
• 1:09
  Ken Rusk: Thanks for having me.
• 1:10
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah, no, no worries.
• 1:11
  Tom Jackobs: I'm really excited to have this conversation because I think there's a lot of heart that needs to be had with employees, and I know you're the guy to tell us about how we can foster that employee centric culture, which I know a lot of employees and employers don't necessarily have.
• 1:28
  Tom Jackobs: So really excited about that.
• 1:30
  Tom Jackobs: But of course, the first question I always like to ask is.
• 1:33
  Tom Jackobs: What's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?
• 1:36
  Ken Rusk: I would say that the definition of a Heart-Led Business is one where you have an atmosphere where people can gain the things that they want for their life with and through your company and they have, they, they have the knowledge and they have the awareness that you as a manager, employer, or boss or owner, whatever you wanna call it you're backing them up on what it is that they see for themselves.
• 2:04
  Ken Rusk: And because of that, there is this need to become great corporate citizens.
• 2:11
  Ken Rusk: And that leads into things like corporate giving, which is more than just money, it's time, talent, and treasure.
• 2:17
  Ken Rusk: And so I, I think that when there's an overall support system for whether it's management here supporting its employees, or the employees learning the culture of supporting the community, I think that is just a really nice round circle that kind of feeds off itself.
• 2:31
  Ken Rusk: And that would be my definition of a Heart-Led Business.
• 2:34
  Tom Jackobs: I love that.
• 2:35
  Tom Jackobs: That's a great definitions one, and I think it's one of the first ones that really puts that employee at the center of it, and I always appreciated when managers and bosses of mine in the past would, sit me down and go, Tom what are your goals for life?
• 2:51
  Tom Jackobs: Not even about the business, but talking about life and I, and now I do that with my own employees as well and I found that it's been very successful in creating a better culture.
• 3:02
  Tom Jackobs: Where did you get that idea from in, in keeping a employee centric focus?
• 3:08
  Ken Rusk: I just remember back when I was 23 and I was just starting this company with six people and you, you wanna be everywhere for everything.
• 3:17
  Ken Rusk: But a true entrepreneur can't do that.
• 3:19
  Ken Rusk: A true entrepreneur is someone that I learned that you have to give up.
• 3:25
  Ken Rusk: Some of the things that, that make a company run in order to take advantage of, the brain power and the vision and the awareness and in intelligence of all the people that are around you, and in order to foster that intrapreneurial kind of spirit.
• 3:39
  Ken Rusk: So for me I knew that if I was gonna grow this company the way I wanted to, I would have to create other people to help me do that.
• 3:48
  Ken Rusk: And in order for that to happen, I wanted them to think like owners.
• 3:52
  Ken Rusk: And in order for them to think like owners, they have to be in control of their individual departments or divisions and run them like their own individual companies where they have input as to, the costs and the purchasing and and, the employees and also the profitability of their particular divisions and their return on investments.
• 4:11
  Ken Rusk: So I started early on trying to create entrepreneurs around me because I knew that I just couldn't do it all.
• 4:18
  Ken Rusk: And it's one of those things where, you hear about these entrepreneurs who go home on Friday night and they say to their husband or to their wife, oh, look at me, I changed this, I fixed that.
• 4:28
  Ken Rusk: I ordered this, I yelled at that.
• 4:30
  Ken Rusk: I made this happen.
• 4:32
  Ken Rusk: And they also have high blood pressure, diabetes, and they can't remember their kids' first names, That was never the hero thing for me.
• 4:39
  Ken Rusk: I never wanted to be like, okay, if you could, if you looked in the parking lot, saw my employees standing shoulder to shoulder with me, you'd go, oh, there's Ken, he's the boss.
• 4:48
  Ken Rusk: I never really wanted that.
• 4:50
  Ken Rusk: I wanted it to be more of a campus style thing than a top down thing.
• 4:54
  Ken Rusk: And so yeah, we've been doing it ever since and just been working out just great.
• 4:58
  Tom Jackobs: That that's great.
• 4:59
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 4:59
  Tom Jackobs: What did it come out of frustration or a certain event that happened that you're like, I, this something has to change?
• 5:07
  Tom Jackobs: Or was it just innate within you?
• 5:10
  Ken Rusk: When you first start a company, you're working.
• 5:12
  Ken Rusk: I don't care how many entrepreneurs or whatever you have when you first started, you're working sun up to sun down for a long period of time, and
• 5:19
  Tom Jackobs: Yep.
• 5:19
  Ken Rusk: you have to make the choice of when that's going to stop.
• 5:23
  Ken Rusk: But for me, very early on I started a landscape company and, my father was a Marine.
• 5:29
  Ken Rusk: He didn't encourage necessarily going to college.
• 5:31
  Ken Rusk: He said, you can if you want, but there's also other ways to make money.
• 5:34
  Ken Rusk: So you make the call.
• 5:36
  Ken Rusk: After people in the country are doing something with their hands to this very day.
• 5:39
  Ken Rusk: And so for me it was something that, I remember that first landscape job where I had myself and two other guys, and I was paying'em five bucks an hour, and they were happy to make that.
• 5:51
  Ken Rusk: I was charging$10 an hour for those guys, and I was on a different job.
• 5:55
  Ken Rusk: And so I knew that you could up or duplicate your efforts through the people that you had and, I thought that was just amazingly cool that I could be at one spot creating this job while another job was going on and the company was making money for everybody.
• 6:11
  Ken Rusk: So
• 6:11
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 6:12
  Ken Rusk: it, to me, it was like.
• 6:14
  Ken Rusk: How do I duplicate that over and over?
• 6:16
  Ken Rusk: Because if two people could do that, what would happen if you had 200?
• 6:20
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 6:20
  Ken Rusk: That's where the growth pattern came from.
• 6:22
  Ken Rusk: It was can I say replicating the effort, replicating yourself, plugging in entrepreneurs when possible and when necessary, and just watching the thing grow.
• 6:31
  Ken Rusk: And I can tell you anyone who thinks they're growing a company by themselves is they're just misleading themselves.
• 6:37
  Ken Rusk: They, they really are.
• 6:39
  Ken Rusk: From your comfort, your peace and your freedom perspective.
• 6:42
  Ken Rusk: Yeah, I wanted to build a big company, but not at the, at the detriment to myself for my
• 6:47
  Tom Jackobs: family.
• 6:48
  Ken Rusk: So yeah, it was a conscious thing to move along that pathway and so far, so good.
• 6:55
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 6:56
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah I think back to my own entrepreneurial journey, and that was one of the hardest lessons that I had to learn was to let go.
• 7:04
  Tom Jackobs: And especially in service-based businesses, the entrepreneur who starts it often thinks I'm the only one that can do this.
• 7:11
  Tom Jackobs: I'm, because it's my baby, it's my process, it's this, and this.
• 7:15
  Tom Jackobs: And I, so I, I was a personal trainer.
• 7:17
  Tom Jackobs: I owned a fitness center.
• 7:19
  Tom Jackobs: And so for the longest time, for the first five years of owning that business, I was still on the floor training people and not really running the business.
• 7:25
  Tom Jackobs: And finally, my coach was like, you need to get off the floor.
• 7:29
  Tom Jackobs: You need to run your business.
• 7:30
  Tom Jackobs: You, you don't need to be doing that anymore.
• 7:32
  Tom Jackobs: So nervous.
• 7:33
  Tom Jackobs: And the moment that I got off the floor, one the businesses increased, clients got started getting better results.
• 7:39
  Tom Jackobs: I was like, wow, I must have been a really bad trainer or something.
• 7:42
  Tom Jackobs: You're thinking about payroll, you're thinking about rent, you're doing all this and not really focusing on the client.
• 7:47
  Tom Jackobs: And at that moment I was like, yeah, this is, yeah, I need to do more of this and not do less of the actual work of the entrepreneur, of the business and do more of nurturing the people to allow them to flourish and carry on the business.
• 8:02
  Ken Rusk: I think that's, I think that's a really important point, and there is a little bit of ego involved in this and that's where people lose their mind when I talk about that because they're like I have to do this and I have no, you really don't.
• 8:13
  Ken Rusk: Okay.
• 8:14
  Ken Rusk: If you're gonna be any good to your company, you're gonna be in a helicopter at 15,000 feet looking down on your company,
• 8:21
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Ken Rusk: Virtually tearing the roof off of it.
• 8:22
  Ken Rusk: And looking into all the little offices and saying, okay, what needs help?
• 8:25
  Ken Rusk: Where?
• 8:26
  Ken Rusk: And also looking ahead 1, 2, 3, 5 miles, which is really 1, 2, 3, 5 months or years.
• 8:33
  Ken Rusk: And seeing where the challenges are gonna get you from or where
• 8:37
  Tom Jackobs: the opportunities
• 8:38
  Ken Rusk: lying.
• 8:38
  Ken Rusk: And you can't do that if your boots on the ground, you have to be up in the air looking down on, on, on what's going on.
• 8:44
  Ken Rusk: And it, it is a difficult thing because a lot of people get their self-worth from the things that they create, like the work that they actually create.
• 8:53
  Ken Rusk: And that's where you really gotta step aside and say wait a minute.
• 8:58
  Ken Rusk: What are we really trying to do here?
• 9:00
  Ken Rusk: I have stood in front of my company and this in front of all 200 and some of the employees, and I've said this a hundred times, I literally can't get what I want for myself or for my company until all of you get what you want for yourself first.
• 9:16
  Ken Rusk: And it's such a true statement because,
• 9:18
  Tom Jackobs: Love that
• 9:19
  Ken Rusk: companies are linear creatures.
• 9:20
  Ken Rusk: You have this input of people and product and raw material and creation and idea, and then a product is born.
• 9:29
  Ken Rusk: And then that product gets a price on it, and then that product gets a price.
• 9:33
  Ken Rusk: And then it be, it gets put in the hand of a salesperson and that person goes out and sells that thing.
• 9:37
  Ken Rusk: And then it's delivered, installed, and hopefully paid for.
• 9:41
  Ken Rusk: And guess what?
• 9:42
  Ken Rusk: At the end of that line, you hope there's something left called profit.
• 9:47
  Ken Rusk: As the business guy, and you know this.
• 9:49
  Ken Rusk: We're always at the end of that line, regardless of where we were, we'd like to be.
• 9:53
  Ken Rusk: We're at the end of
• 9:53
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 9:54
  Ken Rusk: the line.
• 9:55
  Ken Rusk: So why wouldn't you want everyone before you to win and win big?
• 9:58
  Ken Rusk: And that's that, that, that's again where the idea of the entrepreneur born.
• 10:03
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 10:04
  Tom Jackobs: I really wish more, more, more businesses would embody that whole philosophy because I think it would, one, reduce a lot of stress for the owner themselves, which it's stress that we put on ourselves, unfortunately, but I, it would make the business so much better as well.
• 10:20
  Tom Jackobs: cause if you're I have great ideas, but you know what?
• 10:24
  Tom Jackobs: Your employees have great ideas too.
• 10:25
  Tom Jackobs: But if the boss is one that always brings that idea first, the employees are really reluctant to bring ideas as well, because it might counter, it's that whole, difference and between the boss and the employee.
• 10:39
  Tom Jackobs: So how do you foster an environment where there can be that open communication so that they're not afraid of, challenging thoughts that you might have or ideas that you might have.
• 10:51
  Ken Rusk: There's a couple examples.
• 10:52
  Ken Rusk: So the first one was, I remember that we were, in any business you tend to have a sales revenue and then you plateau'cause you get used to that.
• 11:00
  Ken Rusk: And then you stay there for a couple years and then you stretch and you go up higher, and then you stay there for a couple years and then you stretch and you go up higher and that's kinda how things sometimes go, especially if you're doing it with some reason and not just.
• 11:12
  Ken Rusk: The hockey stick where it gets outta control.
• 11:14
  Ken Rusk: And I remember one day I walked into the conference room, this has gotta be 15 years ago, and I had five or six of my entrepreneurial people around me, and I gave them all a small piece of paper and a pencil.
• 11:26
  Ken Rusk: And I said, I want you to write down where you think this company can go revenue-wise in the next year.
• 11:33
  Ken Rusk: And before you write it down, I want you to know something.
• 11:38
  Ken Rusk: If we get there based on your number, I'm gonna share a piece of that with you.
• 11:44
  Ken Rusk: Okay.
• 11:44
  Ken Rusk: So you're creating your own wealth here.
• 11:46
  Tom Jackobs: Nice.
• 11:47
  Ken Rusk: What you know is that every one of their numbers was$2 million higher than mine?
• 11:52
  Ken Rusk: So, I just, I implore people to be careful that you're not your own self limiter, okay.
• 11:59
  Ken Rusk: Be careful that you aren't the one who's putting the ceiling on your business because there are people around you.
• 12:05
  Ken Rusk: And again, they told me, they said, wait a minute, Ken.
• 12:07
  Ken Rusk: Lemme get this straight.
• 12:09
  Ken Rusk: So if we get this extra revenue coming in, you're gonna take a chunk of that and give it to us.
• 12:14
  Ken Rusk: Yeah, well you gotta remember that it was money I didn't have yet, so it was free for me to do that.
• 12:21
  Ken Rusk: It isn't like it cost me anything.
• 12:23
  Ken Rusk: It was not money I had to reach into my pocket and pull out of what we were already doing.
• 12:27
  Ken Rusk: And they were, they embraced it.
• 12:28
  Ken Rusk: They're like, okay, Ken, get the heck out of our way and let's go do this.
• 12:32
  Ken Rusk: I think.
• 12:33
  Ken Rusk: I think that's the first thing, empowering them to feel like they're drivers of the business, but also you have to focus a heck of a lot on, okay, now that you've done this, now you've created this revenue.
• 12:45
  Ken Rusk: Why?
• 12:47
  Ken Rusk: What are you doing it for?
• 12:48
  Ken Rusk: What's your life going to look like?
• 12:50
  Ken Rusk: What, how is your life going to improve?
• 12:53
  Ken Rusk: What does your picture for the life that you have designed in your own mind, what does that look like?
• 12:58
  Ken Rusk: Because I need to get that out on paper.
• 13:00
  Ken Rusk: I need to get that out in public and I need to get, you and me and everyone else to high five each other and say, let's go after that thing.
• 13:07
  Ken Rusk: So you know, right now, if you came into my office and stood on the other side of that door, you'd see a big glass board, a black glass board that hangs on the wall.
• 13:17
  Ken Rusk: It's eight feet by eight feet.
• 13:18
  Ken Rusk: And I'm not board there's 30 or 40 little timed pathways or what people would call goals that are on that board, that are being pursued live as we speak.
• 13:30
  Tom Jackobs: Oh wow.
• 13:30
  Ken Rusk: And there is another board that has hundreds of accomplished goals or time and pathways.
• 13:36
  Ken Rusk: And I, you almost can't work here if you're not chasing something.
• 13:40
  Ken Rusk: Okay.
• 13:41
  Ken Rusk: And in a very specific, a very concise, clear and colorful way with a com, with a completely mapped out pathway.
• 13:48
  Ken Rusk: That's why I call'em timed pathways and not goals, because goals tend to stay in your mind as hopes, wishes, and dreams.
• 13:54
  Ken Rusk: When you turned into a timed pathway, it becomes something completely different.
• 13:58
  Ken Rusk: Yeah, if you combine your co your corporate culture, your corporate ascension, if you combine that pathway with the pathways of the individual, man, you have momentum.
• 14:11
  Ken Rusk: Like you are not gonna believe.
• 14:12
  Ken Rusk: And it's more fun to work that way than it is any other way.
• 14:15
  Ken Rusk: I can assure you that.
• 14:16
  Tom Jackobs: Oh yeah it's so much fun when you're winning, right?
• 14:19
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 14:20
  Tom Jackobs: For sure.
• 14:21
  Tom Jackobs: So tell us a little bit about your business.
• 14:23
  Tom Jackobs: I'm sorry, you should have started at that point, but this is a good segue, but tell us a little bit about your businesses.
• 14:30
  Ken Rusk: We have a portfolio of three or four different construction companies, but the mainstay of it was what I started with since I was 15.
• 14:36
  Ken Rusk: And that was we're basically ditch digger.
• 14:38
  Ken Rusk: This is what we doing.
• 14:38
  Tom Jackobs: Okay.
• 14:39
  Ken Rusk: We fix old wet, smelly rotten basements and crawl spaces and other things like that.
• 14:45
  Ken Rusk: We rebuilt foundations and everything from a sump pump to jacking up an old house, putting a new basement in and setting it back down.
• 14:51
  Ken Rusk: So it's crazy what we do
• 14:53
  Tom Jackobs: Oh my gosh.
• 14:54
  Ken Rusk: But it is.
• 14:55
  Ken Rusk: It's very involved and I started doing it at a very young age.
• 14:58
  Ken Rusk: When I was 18, it was like, okay, are we going to college or are we going to, into the workforce?
• 15:03
  Ken Rusk: What are we doing?
• 15:04
  Ken Rusk: So the boss at the time in Cleveland where I grew up, said, Hey, look it you've been at this for three or four years.
• 15:10
  Ken Rusk: You know the front and the back of the house.
• 15:12
  Ken Rusk: 'cause you've been working here in the office in the wintertime when you were in school and in the summertime you were digging out in the field.
• 15:19
  Ken Rusk: And so we started opening up franchises, and that was my college if you think about it.
• 15:22
  Tom Jackobs: Oh yeah.
• 15:23
  Ken Rusk: I moved to Columbus when I was 18, stayed there for six months, opened a business and left, went to Cincinnati, opened another one, went to Chicago, opened another one, and then Pittsburgh as well.
• 15:33
  Ken Rusk: So after living in out of a suitcase for three or four years, I decided to make put my roots down here in, in Toledo, Ohio, which is where we're at now.
• 15:42
  Ken Rusk: And we start with six people and I think we have 225 today.
• 15:45
  Ken Rusk: So it's been a hell of a ride.
• 15:47
  Tom Jackobs: So same type of business where you're doing the foundations?
• 15:50
  Ken Rusk: Yeah.
• 15:51
  Ken Rusk: So we do that.
• 15:51
  Ken Rusk: We also build houses in Missouri.
• 15:53
  Ken Rusk: We build office buildings and that kind of thing.
• 15:56
  Ken Rusk: We're into construction chemicals.
• 15:58
  Ken Rusk: We're into longevity, life longevity.
• 16:01
  Ken Rusk: It's, which is a whole nother subject that I'm fascinated about.
• 16:03
  Tom Jackobs: Oh yeah.
• 16:04
  Ken Rusk: Yeah, we have we have a little portfolio of things that that get us to where we need to be.
• 16:08
  Ken Rusk: That's for sure.
• 16:09
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 16:09
  Tom Jackobs: That's great.
• 16:10
  Tom Jackobs: And I can imagine if you don't have those entrepreneurs and that employee centric philosophy, that would be just a nightmare to try to manage by one person.
• 16:21
  Ken Rusk: I don't know that I would ever wanna do it.
• 16:23
  Ken Rusk: I don't know that, again I guess you can take some solace from the fact that you're the man or you're the woman, or you're the boss.
• 16:32
  Ken Rusk: But that's not for me.
• 16:33
  Ken Rusk: And I knew that if I wanted to grow in the way that I wanted to grow, that I was gonna have to involve a lot of other very smart people and get them surrounding me and say, okay let's create a fully focused vision for the company and individual visions for all of you individually, and then tie those together and have them go down the track at the same time.
• 16:59
  Ken Rusk: And so we've never looked back and so it's so much fun to walk down the hallway, look at that board, and then find that person and say, wow, I see you're a month away from going to Spain to visit your cousin.
• 17:10
  Ken Rusk: That's really cool.
• 17:12
  Ken Rusk: Or hey, I just, I see you embarked on a new truck.
• 17:15
  Ken Rusk: What's going on there?
• 17:16
  Ken Rusk: You, my old truck's this, and I want to get a new F-150.
• 17:18
  Ken Rusk: Cool.
• 17:19
  Ken Rusk: When's that gonna happen?
• 17:20
  Ken Rusk: I see it's gonna happen at the end of next year.
• 17:21
  Ken Rusk: Yep.
• 17:22
  Ken Rusk: That's what I do every day.
• 17:24
  Ken Rusk: That's like my job now is just to monitor the winds of everybody around me.
• 17:29
  Ken Rusk: And again if you're gonna spend your life doing anything, there has to be a reason why you're doing it.
• 17:36
  Ken Rusk: You can't just wake up and say, man, I hope I get lucky someday and have some money and then I can live my life.
• 17:42
  Ken Rusk: No that's called, that, that's called reacting to life.
• 17:46
  Ken Rusk: I based my whole career here on proacting to life.
• 17:50
  Ken Rusk: Okay?
• 17:51
  Ken Rusk: This isn't if business.
• 17:53
  Ken Rusk: It's only a when.
• 17:54
  Ken Rusk: And I need you to know what your life's gonna look like, because between the two of us, we're gonna get that done for you.
• 17:59
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:00
  Tom Jackobs: So on those on those vision boards, it's both personal as well as business goals that you have that, that people are not the goal board, but the time what did you call it again?
• 18:09
  Ken Rusk: We call'em timed pathways.
• 18:11
  Ken Rusk: Yeah.
• 18:11
  Tom Jackobs: Timed pathways.
• 18:12
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 18:14
  Ken Rusk: The goals for the company are known by everybody through just the computer reports that we have and that kind of thing.
• 18:20
  Ken Rusk: We make a decision early in the year, what we're gonna go after, and then we have that, we break it down in a thousand different ways.
• 18:26
  Ken Rusk: So that is already out there.
• 18:27
  Ken Rusk: And I have these television screens all over the building that have different progressions for what the business is doing.
• 18:33
  Ken Rusk: So that's known by just osmosis.
• 18:37
  Ken Rusk: The individual goals to me are the ones that are important because, again I need you to be anticipating something.
• 18:44
  Ken Rusk: For example I'm sure that everyone that's watching this show right now has planned a vacation.
• 18:49
  Ken Rusk: Okay?
• 18:49
  Ken Rusk: So if take yourself through that for a second, let's say it's December and you're planning to go to Florida for spring break.
• 18:57
  Ken Rusk: Keep it simple.
• 18:58
  Ken Rusk: Or you're thinking about, let's see, your sandals, your bathing suit, the hotel.
• 19:03
  Ken Rusk: You're thinking about the flight, you're thinking about the beach.
• 19:06
  Ken Rusk: You're thinking about the music.
• 19:08
  Ken Rusk: gonna starting to get specific.
• 19:09
  Ken Rusk: Now you're thinking about the palm trees waving and the sound of the ocean crashing.
• 19:13
  Ken Rusk: You're thinking about the restaurants you're gonna go to the music you're gonna listen to the margarita that's in your hand.
• 19:19
  Ken Rusk: You start to smell the Coppertone number eight suntan lotion that we all grew up on.
• 19:24
  Ken Rusk: All those things start to enter your mind as you anticipate this vacation.
• 19:28
  Ken Rusk: And yet every one of us as human beings is almost programmed to know how to do that.
• 19:33
  Ken Rusk: Why aren't we programmed to know how to do the rest of our lives?
• 19:36
  Ken Rusk: Our first car, our first house, our first bank account, our first dog or cat?
• 19:42
  Ken Rusk: What color?
• 19:42
  Ken Rusk: What would you name it?
• 19:43
  Ken Rusk: Our hobbies, our sports, our spirituality, everything.
• 19:47
  Ken Rusk: Why aren't we programmed to design those things as good as we design a vacation?
• 19:53
  Ken Rusk: It's silly.
• 19:54
  Ken Rusk: And yet.
• 19:54
  Ken Rusk: if you can do a vacation, you can do these other things.
• 19:57
  Ken Rusk: So why not do them?
• 19:59
  Ken Rusk: Some of them might be four years down the road, not four months, but so what you're turning an if goal into a when goal, and you're gonna be sure to hit it that way.
• 20:08
  Ken Rusk: So I like to make sure that these vision boards that these people do are broken down into a million pieces, almost like a puzzle.
• 20:16
  Ken Rusk: And do you go after these things one piece at a time?
• 20:20
  Ken Rusk: Because you know it I guess what I'm saying is if I dumped a thousand piece puzzle on your desk right now, there's only one way you would complete that puzzle.
• 20:28
  Ken Rusk: And that's if you had the box, the cover.
• 20:30
  Ken Rusk: And if you look at that box, you can see what you're supposed to be doing right?
• 20:34
  Ken Rusk: And you're moving towards the completion of that box.
• 20:36
  Ken Rusk: I heard the other day that if you build a thousand piece puzzle, you look at the box cover a hundred thousand times.
• 20:45
  Ken Rusk: So if that's true and this is a puzzle that you're gonna break apart and shove into a box when you're done.
• 20:51
  Ken Rusk: Why wouldn't you look at this lifeboard that you're building a hundred thousand times and have that come to you through manifestation?
• 20:59
  Ken Rusk: It's just doesn't make sense that you wouldn't do that.
• 21:02
  Ken Rusk: 'Cause it's, you're using that part of the brain that you don't, that most people never even use.
• 21:07
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Tom Jackobs: And that, that, that is wild.
• 21:09
  Tom Jackobs: That, and you bring up a really good point that we are not trained to do that for other aspects of our life.
• 21:16
  Tom Jackobs: And do that visioning.
• 21:18
  Tom Jackobs: And I don't know how I got it early on in my life, it must have been a mentor or something like that, but I've been doing three, five, and 10 year goals for, 20, 20 years or so.
• 21:29
  Tom Jackobs: And it's always amazing when you do those, especially the three and the five year goals.
• 21:33
  Tom Jackobs: It's like a stretch.
• 21:34
  Tom Jackobs: It's ah, it'd be nice, it'd be nice, it'd be nice,
• 21:37
  Ken Rusk: Yeah.
• 21:37
  Tom Jackobs: But you, but when I've looked back at those goals, I am amazed that one they've been achieved, but not in the way that I had envisioned it happening, which is always such an interesting way that you have that destination in mind.
• 21:53
  Tom Jackobs: But it's GPS in your car, there's an accident, so it reroutes you and that's what kind of life, and if you're open to that, then you can be rerouted.
• 22:01
  Tom Jackobs: But you ultimately do get to the destination at some point.
• 22:04
  Ken Rusk: Yeah.
• 22:04
  Ken Rusk: So I'm gonna drop a name right now.
• 22:07
  Ken Rusk: So you've heard of Tony Robbins, right?
• 22:08
  Tom Jackobs: Yep.
• 22:09
  Ken Rusk: He did the blurb for the cover of my book, blue Collar Cash.
• 22:12
  Ken Rusk: And his son Jeric I was actually on a podcast with him and I we talked about this at some length and he said, it's not just law of attraction, there's an actual science to this.
• 22:23
  Ken Rusk: So we talked about the neurotransmitters and how the more you see something, the more the, the, the little transmissions go back and forth rapidly.
• 22:30
  Ken Rusk: And the more you look at something like the puzzle box, the more those things start to become whole.
• 22:36
  Ken Rusk: And the more you look at these goals or these timed pathways, the more your body becomes into a mode where it thinks it already owns that thing.
• 22:44
  Ken Rusk: So then what it does is it seeks to find it.
• 22:48
  Ken Rusk: And it makes you hyper aware of all the opportunities that you need to be, to make that happen.
• 22:54
  Ken Rusk: What you just described was that whole pathway because your brain told your body, we're going to get this thing.
• 23:02
  Ken Rusk: Regardless of how we get there.
• 23:04
  Ken Rusk: And so you can ship, you can move, you can avoid the accident, you can change a pathway, but the destination remains the same.
• 23:15
  Ken Rusk: And that's the beautiful part because your body knows how to work its way around obstacles in order to obtain the same destination.
• 23:23
  Ken Rusk: And I think that is the most beautiful part of the human brain.
• 23:26
  Ken Rusk: And yet what are have we taught?
• 23:30
  Ken Rusk: We're taught to react.
• 23:31
  Ken Rusk: You're reacting to a clock.
• 23:32
  Ken Rusk: You're reacting to your teacher.
• 23:35
  Ken Rusk: You're reacting to authority.
• 23:36
  Ken Rusk: You're reacting to the cold.
• 23:38
  Ken Rusk: Hey, it's cold out.
• 23:39
  Ken Rusk: Put your coat on.
• 23:40
  Ken Rusk: We're taught to react to everything, hunger and pain.
• 23:44
  Ken Rusk: We're never taught to ProAct.
• 23:45
  Ken Rusk: And yet half of your brain was designed to do that very thing.
• 23:50
  Ken Rusk: So if, people have asked me, if you stood in front of 10,000 teachers right now, what would you say?
• 23:55
  Ken Rusk: Stop teaching reactions and teach people how to ProAct.
• 24:00
  Ken Rusk: Because now you're building independence and you're building self-sustaining people who aren't gonna be parasites on society.
• 24:07
  Ken Rusk: You know.
• 24:07
  Ken Rusk: You could probably, you could eliminate social security altogether if you just did this.
• 24:11
  Tom Jackobs: Much more resilient as well.
• 24:13
  Tom Jackobs: 'cause that seems to be huge problem now.
• 24:15
  Ken Rusk: Those are the characteristics of an entrepreneur.
• 24:17
  Ken Rusk: Persistence, resilience, vision, initiative, faith, courage, generosity all those kinds of things.
• 24:23
  Ken Rusk: But we all have those things inside of us if we have a reason for them to come out.
• 24:27
  Ken Rusk: And that's the point I try to make in the book.
• 24:29
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:29
  Tom Jackobs: That's amazing.
• 24:30
  Tom Jackobs: It's called the reticular activation system.
• 24:33
  Tom Jackobs: Is that right?
• 24:34
  Tom Jackobs: RAS, yeah.
• 24:35
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 24:35
  Tom Jackobs: I've been to a few Tony Robbins events.
• 24:39
  Tom Jackobs: It's like you're thinking about a car and then all of a sudden that's all you see outside.
• 24:44
  Tom Jackobs: It's not like Toyota made a bunch more Camrys over the weekend.
• 24:48
  Tom Jackobs: It's just that you're so focused on that then those opportunities are happening.
• 24:51
  Ken Rusk: That's a hundred percent right.
• 24:52
  Ken Rusk: And again if the if your brain is powerful enough to pull out that vision from random places around your neighborhood and or the highway or even places you've never been before.
• 25:04
  Ken Rusk: Why aren't you harnessing that power to make your life better?
• 25:06
  Ken Rusk: My gosh it's free.
• 25:07
  Ken Rusk: You don't even have to train for it.
• 25:09
  Ken Rusk: I mean, it's
• 25:10
  Tom Jackobs: Right.
• 25:10
  Ken Rusk: You've already got the software downloaded in there.
• 25:14
  Tom Jackobs: Such a good message and such a heart-led message as well.
• 25:17
  Tom Jackobs: I know this was an completely all on the the heart-led piece, but I think these are definitely topics that people need to have, especially business owners, especially Heart-Led Business owners, so that they can free themselves up from the day to day and start to trust their employees and start to achieve the things in their life that they want to achieve as well.
• 25:38
  Ken Rusk: I can tell you one thing if you're talking about heart-led, you know when you coach somebody through getting out of debt, that is stressful and it is frustrating and it is embarrassing and it is all that, and then they start living and they get into their first new whatever thing that they want.
• 25:55
  Ken Rusk: Wow, I can start living for me.
• 25:57
  Ken Rusk: There's no bigger heart to heart than when you and that person have partnered up with and through your company to get them from this, this person of frustration and stress and fear and anxiety to joy and wonder and spontaneity and, being confident.
• 26:17
  Ken Rusk: That's heart right there.
• 26:18
  Ken Rusk: I've been doing this for a lot of years and when you see the transformation of human beings like that, it is so unbelievable and then they become soldiers in the giving back to the community piece, which we do a lot of around here which just builds this whole kind of great thing.
• 26:35
  Ken Rusk: This whole culture thing.
• 26:36
  Ken Rusk: And yeah I think it's a great way to be.
• 26:39
  Tom Jackobs: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Tom Jackobs: That's awesome.
• 26:41
  Tom Jackobs: Ken, how can people learn more about you and the great work that you're doing?
• 26:46
  Ken Rusk: You can go to kenrusk.com, you'll see what we're up to over there.
• 26:50
  Ken Rusk: The book is there.
• 26:51
  Ken Rusk: The course is there.
• 26:52
  Ken Rusk: The the speaking opportunities that I do, are there the next book is coming out.
• 26:56
  Ken Rusk: It's coming out in, in, hopefully in the early summer next year.
• 27:00
  Tom Jackobs: Nice.
• 27:00
  Ken Rusk: About, about, now that you are this culture wanting person, how do you find a business that supports you?
• 27:08
  Ken Rusk: So
• 27:09
  Tom Jackobs: Ah
• 27:09
  Ken Rusk: it's a book written, not to the end user this time, but it's written to the boss, owner, the manager on how to create that environment.
• 27:15
  Ken Rusk: You can find all that at kenrusk.com.
• 27:17
  Ken Rusk: Or you can also see me on the socials it@kenruskofficial, Twitter and Facebook, and Instagram and all those things.
• 27:24
  Tom Jackobs: okay.
• 27:24
  Tom Jackobs: Awesome.
• 27:25
  Tom Jackobs: We'll link all that up into the show notes.
• 27:27
  Tom Jackobs: For sure.
• 27:29
  Tom Jackobs: And Ken, thank you so much for spending your time with us, sharing your wisdom and your experience with us.
• 27:34
  Tom Jackobs: This is really a really good eye-opening discussion.
• 27:37
  Tom Jackobs: So I really appreciate your time.
• 27:39
  Ken Rusk: Yes.
• 27:39
  Ken Rusk: Thank you for having me.
• 27:40
  Ken Rusk: It's been fun.
• 27:41
  Tom Jackobs: Absolutely.
• 27:42
  Tom Jackobs: And thank you listeners for tuning into the show today.
• 27:45
  Tom Jackobs: I really do appreciate it and make sure you are checking out everything that Ken is doing and we'll put all that down in the show notes.
• 27:52
  Tom Jackobs: We'll put those links so it's really convenient for you to just click there and go right to his website and check all that out.
• 27:57
  Tom Jackobs: And also, if you could do me a favor and share the show with a friend or family member that might be an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur.
• 28:04
  Tom Jackobs: I could use some of the advice today as well that would really help me spread the word about Heart-Led Businesses all around the world.
• 28:12
  Tom Jackobs: And until next time, lead with your heart.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.