Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. 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. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Welcome, heart-led heroes. Today we're thrilled to introduce a true champion of change, Ken Rusk. A bestselling author and entrepreneur. Ken has navigated the seas of success with heart, humor, and a hefty dose of grit. 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. So let's strap in for a spirited conversation on the Heart-Led Business Show. Ken, welcome to the show.

Ken Rusk: 1:08

Thanks. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Tom Jackobs: 1:10

Yeah, no, no worries. 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. So really excited about that. But of course, the first question I always like to ask is. What's your definition of a Heart-Led Business?

Ken Rusk: 1:36

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. And because of that, there is this need to become great corporate citizens. And that leads into things like corporate giving, which is more than just money, it's time, talent, and treasure. 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. And that would be my definition of a Heart-Led Business.

Tom Jackobs: 2:34

I love that. 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? 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. Where did you get that idea from in, in keeping a employee centric focus?

Ken Rusk: 3:08

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. But a true entrepreneur can't do that. A true entrepreneur is someone that I learned that you have to give up. 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. 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. And in order for that to happen, I wanted them to think like owners. 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. So I started early on trying to create entrepreneurs around me because I knew that I just couldn't do it all. 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. I ordered this, I yelled at that. I made this happen. 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. 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. I never really wanted that. I wanted it to be more of a campus style thing than a top down thing. And so yeah, we've been doing it ever since and just been working out just great.

Tom Jackobs: 4:58

That that's great. That's great. What did it come out of frustration or a certain event that happened that you're like, I, this something has to change? Or was it just innate within you?

Ken Rusk: 5:10

When you first start a company, you're working. 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

Tom Jackobs: 5:19

Yep.

Ken Rusk: 5:19

you have to make the choice of when that's going to stop. But for me, very early on I started a landscape company and, my father was a Marine. He didn't encourage necessarily going to college. He said, you can if you want, but there's also other ways to make money. So you make the call. After people in the country are doing something with their hands to this very day. 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. I was charging$10 an hour for those guys, and I was on a different job. 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. So

Tom Jackobs: 6:11

Yeah.

Ken Rusk: 6:12

it, to me, it was like. How do I duplicate that over and over? Because if two people could do that, what would happen if you had 200?

Tom Jackobs: 6:20

Yeah.

Ken Rusk: 6:20

That's where the growth pattern came from. It was can I say replicating the effort, replicating yourself, plugging in entrepreneurs when possible and when necessary, and just watching the thing grow. And I can tell you anyone who thinks they're growing a company by themselves is they're just misleading themselves. They, they really are. From your comfort, your peace and your freedom perspective. Yeah, I wanted to build a big company, but not at the, at the detriment to myself for my

Tom Jackobs: 6:47

family.

Ken Rusk: 6:48

So yeah, it was a conscious thing to move along that pathway and so far, so good.

Tom Jackobs: 6:55

Yeah. 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. And especially in service-based businesses, the entrepreneur who starts it often thinks I'm the only one that can do this. I'm, because it's my baby, it's my process, it's this, and this. And I, so I, I was a personal trainer. I owned a fitness center. 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. And finally, my coach was like, you need to get off the floor. You need to run your business. You, you don't need to be doing that anymore. So nervous. And the moment that I got off the floor, one the businesses increased, clients got started getting better results. I was like, wow, I must have been a really bad trainer or something. You're thinking about payroll, you're thinking about rent, you're doing all this and not really focusing on the client. 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.

Ken Rusk: 8:02

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. Okay. 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,

Tom Jackobs: 8:21

Yeah.

Ken Rusk: 8:21

Virtually tearing the roof off of it. And looking into all the little offices and saying, okay, what needs help? Where? And also looking ahead 1, 2, 3, 5 miles, which is really 1, 2, 3, 5 months or years. And seeing where the challenges are gonna get you from or where

Tom Jackobs: 8:37

the opportunities

Ken Rusk: 8:38

lying. 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. 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. And that's where you really gotta step aside and say wait a minute. What are we really trying to do here? 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. And it's such a true statement because,

Tom Jackobs: 9:18

Love that

Ken Rusk: 9:19

companies are linear creatures. You have this input of people and product and raw material and creation and idea, and then a product is born. And then that product gets a price on it, and then that product gets a price. And then it be, it gets put in the hand of a salesperson and that person goes out and sells that thing. And then it's delivered, installed, and hopefully paid for. And guess what? At the end of that line, you hope there's something left called profit. As the business guy, and you know this. We're always at the end of that line, regardless of where we were, we'd like to be. We're at the end of

Tom Jackobs: 9:53

Yeah.

Ken Rusk: 9:54

the line. So why wouldn't you want everyone before you to win and win big? And that's that, that, that's again where the idea of the entrepreneur born.

Tom Jackobs: 10:03

Yeah. 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. cause if you're I have great ideas, but you know what? Your employees have great ideas too. 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. 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.

Ken Rusk: 10:51

There's a couple examples. 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. 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. The hockey stick where it gets outta control. 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. And I said, I want you to write down where you think this company can go revenue-wise in the next year. And before you write it down, I want you to know something. If we get there based on your number, I'm gonna share a piece of that with you. Okay. So you're creating your own wealth here.

Tom Jackobs: 11:46

Nice.

Ken Rusk: 11:47

What you know is that every one of their numbers was$2 million higher than mine? So, I just, I implore people to be careful that you're not your own self limiter, okay. Be careful that you aren't the one who's putting the ceiling on your business because there are people around you. And again, they told me, they said, wait a minute, Ken. Lemme get this straight. So if we get this extra revenue coming in, you're gonna take a chunk of that and give it to us. Yeah, well you gotta remember that it was money I didn't have yet, so it was free for me to do that. It isn't like it cost me anything. It was not money I had to reach into my pocket and pull out of what we were already doing. And they were, they embraced it. They're like, okay, Ken, get the heck out of our way and let's go do this. I think. 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. Why? What are you doing it for? What's your life going to look like? What, how is your life going to improve? What does your picture for the life that you have designed in your own mind, what does that look like? Because I need to get that out on paper. 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. 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. It's eight feet by eight feet. 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.

Tom Jackobs: 13:30

Oh wow.

Ken Rusk: 13:30

And there is another board that has hundreds of accomplished goals or time and pathways. And I, you almost can't work here if you're not chasing something. Okay. And in a very specific, a very concise, clear and colorful way with a com, with a completely mapped out pathway. That's why I call'em timed pathways and not goals, because goals tend to stay in your mind as hopes, wishes, and dreams. When you turned into a timed pathway, it becomes something completely different. 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. Like you are not gonna believe. And it's more fun to work that way than it is any other way. I can assure you that.

Tom Jackobs: 14:16

Oh yeah it's so much fun when you're winning, right? Yeah. For sure. So tell us a little bit about your business. 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.

Ken Rusk: 14:30

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. And that was we're basically ditch digger. This is what we doing.

Tom Jackobs: 14:38

Okay.

Ken Rusk: 14:39

We fix old wet, smelly rotten basements and crawl spaces and other things like that. 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. So it's crazy what we do

Tom Jackobs: 14:53

Oh my gosh.

Ken Rusk: 14:54

But it is. It's very involved and I started doing it at a very young age. When I was 18, it was like, okay, are we going to college or are we going to, into the workforce? What are we doing? 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. You know the front and the back of the house.'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. And so we started opening up franchises, and that was my college if you think about it.

Tom Jackobs: 15:22

Oh yeah.

Ken Rusk: 15:23

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. 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. And we start with six people and I think we have 225 today. So it's been a hell of a ride.

Tom Jackobs: 15:47

So same type of business where you're doing the foundations?

Ken Rusk: 15:50

Yeah. So we do that. We also build houses in Missouri. We build office buildings and that kind of thing. We're into construction chemicals. We're into longevity, life longevity. It's, which is a whole nother subject that I'm fascinated about.

Tom Jackobs: 16:03

Oh yeah.

Ken Rusk: 16:04

Yeah, we have we have a little portfolio of things that that get us to where we need to be. That's for sure.

Tom Jackobs: 16:09

Yeah. That's great. 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.

Ken Rusk: 16:21

I don't know that I would ever wanna do it. 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. But that's not for me. 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. 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. That's really cool. Or hey, I just, I see you embarked on a new truck. What's going on there? You, my old truck's this, and I want to get a new F-150. Cool. When's that gonna happen? I see it's gonna happen at the end of next year. Yep. That's what I do every day. That's like my job now is just to monitor the winds of everybody around me. And again if you're gonna spend your life doing anything, there has to be a reason why you're doing it. 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. No that's called, that, that's called reacting to life. I based my whole career here on proacting to life. Okay? This isn't if business. It's only a when. 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.

Tom Jackobs: 17:59

Yeah. 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?

Ken Rusk: 18:09

We call'em timed pathways. Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 18:11

Timed pathways. Yeah.

Ken Rusk: 18:14

The goals for the company are known by everybody through just the computer reports that we have and that kind of thing. 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. So that is already out there. And I have these television screens all over the building that have different progressions for what the business is doing. So that's known by just osmosis. The individual goals to me are the ones that are important because, again I need you to be anticipating something. For example I'm sure that everyone that's watching this show right now has planned a vacation. Okay? 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. Keep it simple. Or you're thinking about, let's see, your sandals, your bathing suit, the hotel. You're thinking about the flight, you're thinking about the beach. You're thinking about the music. gonna starting to get specific. Now you're thinking about the palm trees waving and the sound of the ocean crashing. 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. You start to smell the Coppertone number eight suntan lotion that we all grew up on. All those things start to enter your mind as you anticipate this vacation. And yet every one of us as human beings is almost programmed to know how to do that. Why aren't we programmed to know how to do the rest of our lives? Our first car, our first house, our first bank account, our first dog or cat? What color? What would you name it? Our hobbies, our sports, our spirituality, everything. Why aren't we programmed to design those things as good as we design a vacation? It's silly. And yet. if you can do a vacation, you can do these other things. So why not do them? 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. 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. And do you go after these things one piece at a time? 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. And that's if you had the box, the cover. And if you look at that box, you can see what you're supposed to be doing right? And you're moving towards the completion of that box. I heard the other day that if you build a thousand piece puzzle, you look at the box cover a hundred thousand times. 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. Why wouldn't you look at this lifeboard that you're building a hundred thousand times and have that come to you through manifestation? It's just doesn't make sense that you wouldn't do that.'Cause it's, you're using that part of the brain that you don't, that most people never even use.

Tom Jackobs: 21:07

Yeah. And that, that, that is wild. That, and you bring up a really good point that we are not trained to do that for other aspects of our life. And do that visioning. 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. And it's always amazing when you do those, especially the three and the five year goals. It's like a stretch. It's ah, it'd be nice, it'd be nice, it'd be nice,

Ken Rusk: 21:37

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs: 21:37

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. 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. But you ultimately do get to the destination at some point.

Ken Rusk: 22:04

Yeah. So I'm gonna drop a name right now. So you've heard of Tony Robbins, right?

Tom Jackobs: 22:08

Yep.

Ken Rusk: 22:09

He did the blurb for the cover of my book, blue Collar Cash. 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. 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. And the more you look at something like the puzzle box, the more those things start to become whole. 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. So then what it does is it seeks to find it. And it makes you hyper aware of all the opportunities that you need to be, to make that happen. What you just described was that whole pathway because your brain told your body, we're going to get this thing. Regardless of how we get there. And so you can ship, you can move, you can avoid the accident, you can change a pathway, but the destination remains the same. And that's the beautiful part because your body knows how to work its way around obstacles in order to obtain the same destination. And I think that is the most beautiful part of the human brain. And yet what are have we taught? We're taught to react. You're reacting to a clock. You're reacting to your teacher. You're reacting to authority. You're reacting to the cold. Hey, it's cold out. Put your coat on. We're taught to react to everything, hunger and pain. We're never taught to ProAct. And yet half of your brain was designed to do that very thing. So if, people have asked me, if you stood in front of 10,000 teachers right now, what would you say? Stop teaching reactions and teach people how to ProAct. Because now you're building independence and you're building self-sustaining people who aren't gonna be parasites on society. You know. You could probably, you could eliminate social security altogether if you just did this.

Tom Jackobs: 24:11

Much more resilient as well.'cause that seems to be huge problem now.

Ken Rusk: 24:15

Those are the characteristics of an entrepreneur. Persistence, resilience, vision, initiative, faith, courage, generosity all those kinds of things. But we all have those things inside of us if we have a reason for them to come out. And that's the point I try to make in the book.

Tom Jackobs: 24:29

Yeah. That's amazing. It's called the reticular activation system. Is that right? RAS, yeah. Yeah. I've been to a few Tony Robbins events. It's like you're thinking about a car and then all of a sudden that's all you see outside. It's not like Toyota made a bunch more Camrys over the weekend. It's just that you're so focused on that then those opportunities are happening.

Ken Rusk: 24:51

That's a hundred percent right. 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. Why aren't you harnessing that power to make your life better? My gosh it's free. You don't even have to train for it. I mean, it's

Tom Jackobs: 25:10

Right.

Ken Rusk: 25:10

You've already got the software downloaded in there.

Tom Jackobs: 25:14

Such a good message and such a heart-led message as well. 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.

Ken Rusk: 25:38

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. Wow, I can start living for me. 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. That's heart right there. 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. This whole culture thing. And yeah I think it's a great way to be.

Tom Jackobs: 26:39

Yeah. That's awesome. Ken, how can people learn more about you and the great work that you're doing?

Ken Rusk: 26:46

You can go to kenrusk.com, you'll see what we're up to over there. The book is there. The course is there. The the speaking opportunities that I do, are there the next book is coming out. It's coming out in, in, hopefully in the early summer next year.

Tom Jackobs: 27:00

Nice.

Ken Rusk: 27:00

About, about, now that you are this culture wanting person, how do you find a business that supports you? So

Tom Jackobs: 27:09

Ah

Ken Rusk: 27:09

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. You can find all that at kenrusk.com. Or you can also see me on the socials it@kenruskofficial, Twitter and Facebook, and Instagram and all those things.

Tom Jackobs: 27:24

okay. Awesome. We'll link all that up into the show notes. For sure. And Ken, thank you so much for spending your time with us, sharing your wisdom and your experience with us. This is really a really good eye-opening discussion. So I really appreciate your time.

Ken Rusk: 27:39

Yes. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.

Tom Jackobs: 27:41

Absolutely. And thank you listeners for tuning into the show today. 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. 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. 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. 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. And until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 28:15

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.