“Leadership is about turning people into doers.”
In this episode, Craig Anderson talks with Marc Rust, CEO and Founder of Consequently Creative, about the intersection of creativity, leadership, and vision. Marc shares his journey from creative director to business owner, highlighting the importance of setting clear standards, fostering initiative, and balancing passion with structure. He talks about how hiring people with strong personal passions leads to stronger teams, why fear holds so many leaders back, and how gratitude can open doors to success. Marc also reflects on leadership lessons from Richard Branson, the power of audacity, and why finishing what you start is just as crucial as starting in the first place.
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Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
Craig Anderson [00:00:00]:
My teacher looked down at his book, looked up at me, and said, you've pretty much screwed yourself. Mr. Anderson.
Craig Anderson [00:00:08]:
Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to.
Craig Anderson [00:00:21]:
This isn't quite a leadership story, but way back when, as a young high school student, I had a really tough teacher for a class, and he, at the time, always told people what their grades were before going into finals, so they knew what they needed to get on their final to get their grade. Pretty sure you can't do that anymore. At any rate, it was my senior year. I hadn't really been trying too hard, and he looked at me, read out my grades, and said, I pretty much screwed myself to getting the grade I wanted. He set the standard for what I needed to do, and by God, I did. It probably bombed a couple other finals because I put so much time into that one. But he laid down the groundwork for what success was going to look like for me. And in today's interview with Marc Rust, the CEO and founder of Consequently Creative, we talk about the importance of setting the vision of what success looks like, even if that's really a high bar.
Craig Anderson [00:01:09]:
What's important is for us as leaders to tell the team what the bar is so they know what they're walking into when they begin to work for us. So that's enough of a preview. Let's jump right in to today's interview with Marc Rust.
Craig Anderson [00:01:25]:
Marc, welcome to the Executive Evolution podcast. I am so glad to have you here today.
Marc Rust [00:01:30]:
Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great.
Craig Anderson [00:01:32]:
Oh, yeah. We used to work together many, many years ago in the Chase era.
Marc Rust [00:01:37]:
I know I must make you feel old.
Craig Anderson [00:01:40]:
A little. Everything makes me feel old.
Marc Rust [00:01:42]:
Yeah, right. Come on.
Craig Anderson [00:01:44]:
But we were both so young and. Yeah, it was a different time.
Marc Rust [00:01:48]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Craig Anderson [00:01:48]:
Now you've got this whole business going, Consequently Creative.
Marc Rust [00:01:52]:
Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. We're still a baby in business years, I guess, but it's going great. It's awesome. I'm so grateful. So happy working with my favorite people, delivering great projects.
Craig Anderson [00:02:03]:
Love it. So we were just talking the other day, and it's like, let's talk more leadership and get you on the pod. So are you ready to jump into what I call the lightning round, but never actually is a lightning round?
Marc Rust [00:02:14]:
Yeah, I don't think anybody's ever ready, so, no, I'm not ready.
Craig Anderson [00:02:17]:
All right, we're going to go you ready? Yeah. What is the best book on leadership you have ever read?
Marc Rust [00:02:23]:
So I'm not crazy about leadership books, but if I was to say one, it would have to be a Seth Godin book. He wrote a book called Linchpin a few years back. It's great because it's the book that kind of gives you all the shortcuts in order to get promoted to be a leader in your field and do better, constantly do better, and ultimately make your boss's life easier by being that solution provider for the people above you, the people below you. And I really took that book to heart. It's one of those things where I've always found it difficult to read business books because a lot of times business writers are not the best writers. But audiobooks, great. So my thing is just do an audiobook, but take notes while you're listening to it and then go back and read those notes. For me, listening to something, taking notes just sets it in stone so well.
Craig Anderson [00:03:11]:
And it's so interesting. I've not read that Seth Godin book. I've read others. And he very much distills the ideas.
Marc Rust [00:03:17]:
Yeah, right.
Craig Anderson [00:03:18]:
It's not just like a bunch of words to write a bunch of words. He very much distills it down and makes it very focused is what I find.
Marc Rust [00:03:24]:
Yeah. He'll say things that you're like, oh, my gosh. Yes. This has made sense to me my whole life, but I've never verbalized it, you know? So, yeah, that's really great. That's a book that's helped me. And then I. I have to mention another one. It's definitely a leadership book because it could apply to everybody.
Marc Rust [00:03:39]:
But when I was in high school, I came across this book that just changed my life. I was a very poor student. I was always a poor student. And then one day in high school, I was at my best friend's house and this book was on the coffee table. It was his father's book. And I picked it up and started reading it. And I was like, dude, I've got to steal this book. Tell your dad that I will give it back.
Marc Rust [00:04:00]:
I never gave it back, but it was a book called Use Your Head by Tony Buzan. Use your head. And it just tells you how to think, how to organize lists, how to learn something very quickly, and just small little things that turned me into a really, really good student. Yeah. And some of the stuff was just like, you know, when studying for a test, you should take a break every 15 minutes because they find out that. And this is just one example. When you listen to something or you study something, you remember the beginning and you remember the end intensely. So if you can reduce the amount that you are studying into little bite sized pieces, you're going to remember more.
Craig Anderson [00:04:40]:
That's amazing.
Marc Rust [00:04:41]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:04:41]:
And completely related, but not germane. But I'm going to say it anyway. I just saw a thing yesterday that said AI actually works the same way.
Marc Rust [00:04:48]:
Really?
Craig Anderson [00:04:49]:
It remembers beginning and ending of stuff, but gets a little fuzzy in the middle.
Marc Rust [00:04:52]:
That just goes to show. Yeah, we're all robots.
Craig Anderson [00:04:55]:
There you go. All right, question number two. Who is your leadership crush?
Marc Rust [00:05:00]:
All right, this one is super easy. It's Richard Branson by far.
Craig Anderson [00:05:04]:
Okay. Why he's not come up before?
Marc Rust [00:05:07]:
He's never come up before. Well, first off, he's like the anti entrepreneur, right? He's the anti leader. He never went to school. He did not graduate high school. He named his company Virgin because they said they were virgins at business. They did not know what they were doing. He wrote this book called Losing My Virginity that it just talks about his path, but it's just so original. There's so much enthusiasm out of what he does.
Marc Rust [00:05:32]:
And he became an entrepreneur because of the way he was raised. And his parents were always like, you can do it. Yeah, why not? Why not do it? Why not start something? So that spirit of like, we can do it. I mean, actually to quote him, it's screw it, let's do it. That's his quote. It's fantastic. It's having the ability to jump in and say, I'm gonna learn from this. And that's the best part.
Marc Rust [00:05:55]:
Success might happen, it might not happen. It doesn't matter. The best part is learning from it. I was listening to like a little snippet of audio on LinkedIn or something like that last week where he was talking about how he launched Virgin Cola, which was a total flop. But he says he thinks about it all the time because it was so much fun and he learned so much from it. And so, yeah, that was just a really cool thing for him.
Craig Anderson [00:06:18]:
He strikes me as a guy who just goes with his gut. Like his gut tells him we can do this. And then you just stumble in and find your way through and then make the call if it doesn't work. Which apparently Virgin Cola didn't work. But he's got a lot of other things that did.
Marc Rust [00:06:31]:
Yeah, a lot of them. And it's all done in a very, very original way. When I read that book, which. The Losing My Virginity book, I wrote him a letter after. And this was like early 90s, back when people would get mail and stuff. And he wrote me back. It was really cool.
Craig Anderson [00:06:47]:
Really?
Marc Rust [00:06:47]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something really authentic about him.
Craig Anderson [00:06:49]:
Did you keep it?
Marc Rust [00:06:51]:
I did, yeah. Nice.
Craig Anderson [00:06:52]:
I'd have that framed. That's cool. Maybe put that right back up there behind you. That's my. You just go, that's my Richard Branson letter.
Marc Rust [00:07:01]:
Yeah, exactly.
Craig Anderson [00:07:02]:
All right. This. Great radio. All right, next question. In 10 words or less, how would you define leadership?
Marc Rust [00:07:08]:
All right, so leadership to me is. It's about giving the people the desire to have initiative, turning people into doers. That's what makes the difference between all of us, those who do and those who don't.
Craig Anderson [00:07:21]:
I like that. Turning people into doers.
Marc Rust [00:07:23]:
Yeah. I mean, I could go on and on, but you just wanted 10 words. So I think that's. That's about 10 words.
Craig Anderson [00:07:29]:
We may touch on it as we go, so love it. All right, so, Marc, take me back. What was the first leadership role you can recall having?
Marc Rust [00:07:39]:
I don't know if I ever feel like a leader now. I have my own business and stuff. Of course I am. But I don't know if there's a first leadership role. I mean, of course there's a path I took. And like, when I was in junior high, I started my own magazine in school, and that was a total failure. But that was fun and that. That taught me a lot.
Marc Rust [00:07:56]:
It was leadership. Maybe that was my first leadership role of just trying to say, hey, let's do this. We're going to do this. This is how we're going to do it. This is what. We're going to do this. Who's going to write for it? We're going to. We did photocopies and stapled it together, and that was our magazine.
Marc Rust [00:08:09]:
And then after that, music was a big part of my life. Being in a rock band, writing your own song, stuff like that, that's definitely a big, big part of leadership. When I find out that somebody. During an interview, if I find out that somebody is a musician, to me, that means a lot. The first one where I intentionally really tried to show something and get people excited was I had to teach graphic design at a college level. I taught a Photoshop class, and that really turned me into, like, okay, thinking about, how do you get people excited? To me, that is leadership. Teaching something is definitely leadership. And then from that, obviously, the first time I became a creative director at an agency, just the going from art director to being called creative director is the big step that you make at one point in the kind of career that I have where now you have a team of designers, now you, you have to like motivate these designers and produce amazing work consistently.
Marc Rust [00:09:08]:
So I think it's, it's the first time I became a creative director is the first professional versus the non professional, junior high stuff, professional leadership.
Craig Anderson [00:09:19]:
But I think what's interesting in that, right, is that through line, all of that is this kind of creative vision you have. And then you have to kind of get that through other people to execute, to kind of, you know, what you said before by like turning the people into doers following your vision. So in all those, how did you find it most effective? Because I'm sure when you're a creative director, right, you've got creative people around you. I'm pretty sure they don't always agree with your creative vision.
Marc Rust [00:09:47]:
No.
Craig Anderson [00:09:47]:
So how do you harness all that as a leader of a creative leader? Harnessing creatives and push the idea out?
Marc Rust [00:09:54]:
It's about, to me, I think that you need to celebrate initiative. You need to create a fertile ground for initiative to happen. It's about inspiring people. If you have inspiration, enough inspiration, you're going to turn into a doer, in my opinion. And it is about that. So it isn't about doing the work at hand. Yeah, okay. We're part of a design team within a bigger agency and we have projects and we need to do that.
Marc Rust [00:10:20]:
Great. We can go along about doing that, that's fine. But how do we do that and progress at the same time? Because I really believe that, okay, progress is a law of life. Everything grows, everything gets older, every plant grows and gets stronger, et cetera. We need to do that as humans, right? We need to do that with our minds. It's kind of a use it or lose it type of belief. But so you need to constantly have your eye out on some sort of vision of something big. Even if you don't know how to do it, even if you don't know how you're going to get there, that's fine.
Marc Rust [00:10:54]:
And that's why I love music so much. Music has been such a big important part of my life and I love working with musicians because a musician is a person that can say that can have a vision and get there. You know what I mean? And I'm not saying you need to be composing your own music or whatever. Let's say you listen to a song and you're like, oh yeah, that lick sounds pretty cool on the guitar? Yeah, I could probably figure it out. You already make the promise to yourself that you can do it before you know how to do it. And then you go to the guitar, you listen to it, you rewind, you go over and over, you try to imitate it, and you end up teaching yourself how to do it because of that spirit of initiative.
Craig Anderson [00:11:33]:
Yeah.
Marc Rust [00:11:34]:
And so having that vision, same thing with leadership. Same thing with your job. If you can say, yeah, I can get there. Yeah, I have an idea, I can get there. That's what entrepreneurship is all about.
Craig Anderson [00:11:45]:
Yeah. Getting them there. And like, how do you find through those roles, especially in that first role, how did you harness that energy then to kind of get everybody to get there? What did you find effective for that?
Marc Rust [00:11:56]:
Obviously, you need to hire the right people and you need to find the talent that can do it. And I have to admit, that's really hard to do. For me, when hiring people, designers, for example, it was always important to me that it wasn't a designer that didn't just come across design in college and say, oh, yeah, I like that. Let me learn about that. Oh, I like it. I'm going to turn into my career. I'm not saying that those people are bad, but I find that the designers that were the most effective and that had vision and that I could motivate and work extremely well with were those that became designers because they couldn't do anything else. Because deep from childhood, they started tinkering with things, taking their toys apart and seeing how the inner workings of things and understanding things.
Marc Rust [00:12:48]:
This isn't something they started in college. It's something they started at 7 years old. I don't know. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. Because you need to have skills that you pull from way long ago in order to do things. I don't know if that answers your question, but it does.
Craig Anderson [00:13:05]:
And it also got me thinking. I'm creative, but not in certain ways. Like, certainly not in a design way. So I go out to Canva, right? I can go out and Canva and make something, but it's usually ripping off something clearly somebody else already made. And so the energy is different, I think, and the ownership is different. What I think I hear you saying is when you're hiring people in that are going to be part of your vision, you want people to have ownership of that urgent initial vision because they're going to be able to feed into the creativity more than somebody who said, oh, yes, I learned that blue goes so good with red. If you do it in a triangle in a circle. And now I apply that.
Craig Anderson [00:13:38]:
Is that kind of what you're saying, or am I just way off?
Marc Rust [00:13:41]:
I don't think it's bad that you're going to canva to do something, because I think that it's impossible to start from a blank page. You have to start from something. Right? Going to music and going. Probably the bands that you and I listen to, even new bands that you and I listen to, well, those are bands that got influenced by the music of the 60s, 70s, 80s, that have formed what modern music is today. That's not bad. I mean, they've got their influences. Influences are important. And because you can't start from a blank slate.
Marc Rust [00:14:13]:
In the same way that going to leadership, I think about what are the best bosses that I've had out there? What are the most difficult bosses that I've had out there? But more importantly, who did I learn the most from? I think about, like, the nice boss. I didn't learn anything from the super nice boss. I learned from the tough boss who pushed me and said, you can do it and you should do it, or shut up and listen right now. Okay. I mean, I was just watching a movie with my kids, The Devil Wears Prada. Okay.
Craig Anderson [00:14:43]:
Yeah.
Marc Rust [00:14:44]:
I don't know if you've seen that movie.
Craig Anderson [00:14:45]:
I have.
Marc Rust [00:14:45]:
Where, okay. The devil is the main woman, Miranda Priestly, in it, who's the editor in chief of a magazine. She has a standard that she wants people to abide by, and that standard is perfect. Less than perfect is not tolerable. Right. And people say, oh, well, she's a jerk. She's must be horrible to work for. Okay, sure.
Marc Rust [00:15:08]:
But you're learning under somebody like that more than anybody else, because you're learning for somebody who has a vision and who's striving for better and. And better and better. And ultimately, those are the people that are creating the future.
Craig Anderson [00:15:22]:
It's so interesting. I was having this discussion with somebody the other day about leadership, and they were talking about, oh, you know, reluctant leaders maybe make the best leaders, which I'm not sure is the right rubric for what. I think what makes a good leader is somebody who's willing to set a creative vision and set the drive forward. Maybe you stepped into it because nobody else would, or maybe it was like, hey, I have this idea, and I want everyone else to come along. Also, when you're thinking about that, people start thinking about, like you said, the mean boss. What's mean? And even so, what about an ethical boss? It's like, what's ethical in a lot of contexts of leadership. Right. If my vision is to build this company that's going to be highly successful, highly profitable, then sometimes maybe I'm going to have to let people go who aren't great performers.
Craig Anderson [00:16:05]:
Does that mean I'm an unethical boss, or am I just a boss with high standards? I'm looking to get people aligned with my vision of what I'm trying to do with the business. And if my vision is Miranda's vision of we are going to do everything perfectly, we don't tolerate anything less than 100% of what we put out in our product, then, yeah, you're going to do that. And people need to know that coming in. Right. If I'm a 75% person and 75% is good enough, I'm sure there's a company I can work for that's going to be just fine.
Marc Rust [00:16:32]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:16:33]:
But it's not going to be her. And as long as we tell people this is the standard, when you come in, then they know. And if you walk in and suddenly you can't live up to that standard, well, you probably should have known that before you got there, because this is how we run the business.
Marc Rust [00:16:45]:
You're right. But also, I mean, like, there's been times where I've sat with our directors and looked over their work, and we're looking at it together, and I'm like, it's just not there yet. I don't know what you need to do, but this is not there enough. It's not up to par. It's not what the project needs. It's not meeting our goals. I'm sorry to say this, but you might not have to stay late. You got to figure this out.
Marc Rust [00:17:07]:
Right?
Craig Anderson [00:17:07]:
Yeah.
Marc Rust [00:17:08]:
And are they pissed off or mad at me at that point? Maybe their feelings are a little bit hurt. I mean, I definitely don't believe in being a bully and pushing people around. Say it respectfully.
Craig Anderson [00:17:16]:
Yeah.
Marc Rust [00:17:16]:
But there's been situations where, okay, I come in on Monday morning and I look at it and I'm like, wow, okay. This is way better. And they're like, yeah. And thank you, by the way, for telling me, because obviously, honesty always wins.
Craig Anderson [00:17:28]:
Yeah. And I think in that. Right. There's a lot of good lessons in that. As one, you know, you have to push people to say, hey, no, that's okay. But here's our standard. And I know you need something more in this. And you know it, too.
Craig Anderson [00:17:38]:
Chances are they know it, too.
Marc Rust [00:17:40]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:17:41]:
They just are also like, well, it's 6:00 on Friday. But then the other thing I think that's important to what you noted is then on Monday, when it was there, you acknowledged it. So it's okay to push hard, but we also have to acknowledge the effort when they deliver. And I think there's way too many bosses who are great at the push and they suck at the good job part, which is, like, the easiest part.
Marc Rust [00:18:02]:
Oh, yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:18:02]:
Appreciation is, like, the easiest thing in the world.
Marc Rust [00:18:05]:
Yeah, for sure.
Craig Anderson [00:18:07]:
There's a lot of people that are just like, congratulations, you did your job. Move on.
Marc Rust [00:18:11]:
Yeah. No, I think that a lot of leadership is obviously about helping people grow in their job. And giving appreciation helps reinforce that, helps reinforce the step that they're stepping on. I personally think that gratitude is the one thing that opens up the big doors in life.
Craig Anderson [00:18:29]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:18:30]:
Oh, yeah. So to press on, something we talked about a little bit earlier, as you look at it today, and you talked about hiring the right people, and the conversation we just had about kind of having the vision. So when you go find those people, how do you help them understand what it's going to be like to work for you?
Marc Rust [00:18:46]:
That's difficult. I give them as many examples as possible. First off, you have to. I heard once from this. This pitch master, this British guy on a podcast that you win a pitch, you get a job, you ace an interview on three things, and he's like, you can look at it any old way, but it's always these three things, and it's number one. Do they like you? Because you obviously want to work with people that. That you like. Do you like them? Same thing, right? And then finally, are you hungry? Meaning, are you showing that you've got that grit, that urge, that.
Marc Rust [00:19:22]:
That desire? Right. So if, like, if I'm looking for somebody who's going to work well with my team, there's gotta be some reflection in that. And, you know, obviously interesting people make great employees because you have a lot to talk about and you can connect on a lot of levels. I always try to find somebody who has a passion, a strong passion, outside of work, outside of what they do. I will interview them like crazy on that. If somebody says, hey, I like hiking, all right, what do you mean by hiking? Where do you go? What have you hiked? Why do you do it? What do you think about when you're hiking? All of those things turns that person into something far more interesting than just the job at hand. Right?
Craig Anderson [00:20:02]:
Yeah.
Marc Rust [00:20:02]:
And by the way, a passion allows somebody to be really good at their job.
Craig Anderson [00:20:07]:
Right.
Marc Rust [00:20:07]:
For example, Albert Einstein. Very few people know this. He was a virtuoso violinist, really concert level. And it's because he was so such a good violinist that he was such a good scientist. They're absolutely parallel. So looking for that sort of stuff allows you to hire people who are really effective, I think.
Craig Anderson [00:20:30]:
Love it. All right, so you know, as you've gone over that journey from the first creative director role to this role, what lessons have you brought from then that make you big better today?
Marc Rust [00:20:42]:
I feel like I'm still doing the same thing. But overall, I have to say that what I've learned the most over leading teams to now leading my own company is that you need to be the visionary. And had I focused more on the vision of things, I think I would have accelerated this journey. I read this really cool story about Elvis Presley. Okay, everybody knows Elvis Presley. Few people know who Colonel Tom Parker is. And for those who don't know, look him up. Now, for those who don't know, Colonel Tom Parker was Elvis's manager and he discovered Elvis.
Marc Rust [00:21:21]:
He told Elvis when to sing, when to dance, when to be in a movie, when to go on stage, etc. And they had an agreement on a handshake that he got half of every dollar that Elvis made. And some would argue, oh my gosh, isn't he lucky to have found Elvis. But actually, it's totally the other way. Elvis is extremely lucky to have found Tom Parker because the world isn't not lacking talent. We've got enough talent in the world. You go on the street corner, there's many guitar singing guys that are awesome and have a lot of talent. Okay, that's not difficult.
Marc Rust [00:22:01]:
What's difficult is finding the guy like Tom Parker who's going to actually go, know how to build somebody up, know how to be the leader, know how to be the entrepreneur, know how to source all the opportunities for somebody. So that's it. Yes. You might have talent. Don't just focus on your talent. Focus on being the person that knows how to move that forward. Right. You and I have kids and stuff.
Marc Rust [00:22:28]:
Let's say, you know, your kid is a great singer and really loves that. Okay, that's great. But don't just focus on being a singer. You've got a talent, you got a gift. That's great. Also focus on how are you going to use that voice and do something that is going to actually elevate you. So that visionary component is something that has helped me the most, not necessarily the talent.
Craig Anderson [00:22:51]:
It's so important. It's a lot of what I find with small business owners that I work with is a lot of small business owners, right. They have this real passion for whatever it is, Music playing, creative design, dog kennel, whatever it is. Right. And they have this idea, and that passion carries them really far along, gets the business started, gets a couple people around it. But at a certain point, you have to start building structures around the business, and their passion won't get you through that.
Marc Rust [00:23:17]:
Yeah, right.
Craig Anderson [00:23:18]:
That's what I've tried to do with my business is to say, look, I know there's a clear path forward, and you have no idea what it is. You can either figure it out the hard way, or I can give you some frameworks that we can build around it so that you can start harnessing that energy. So suddenly you're not, like, blowing up the business because you're so focused on your passion area that you forget that. Oh, by the way, cash flow matters.
Marc Rust [00:23:39]:
Oh, my gosh. Exactly. Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:23:41]:
And that's a huge thing, for sure.
Marc Rust [00:23:43]:
So I do workshops, branding workshops for people where we kind of uncover what they stand for and stuff like that. One exercise I do is to just show a hamburger. I show a hamburger, and it happens to be a McDonald's hamburger. And I say, okay. And I ask people, you know, what is this? They all go, it's a hamburger. Okay, Great. This is McDonald's hamburger. Who here thinks that they can make a better hamburger than McDonald's? And people raise their arms, their hands, and they say, okay, yeah, I would make it with better beef.
Marc Rust [00:24:11]:
I would make it with blah, blah, blah. I would do better bread, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so then I'll ask, okay, great. Then why aren't you a millionaire? If you claim that you can make a better burger, why aren't you a millionaire? And then the conversation changes and it turns into leadership, marketing, sales, building a story, et cetera, et cetera. And that's how you grow. But the sad part of that is that you might have a restaurant on the corner where the cook is making the best hamburger in the world, but that guy will not promote himself, will not take a marketing class, will not take leadership courses, because he's too proud. He's like, are you crazy? No. I'm a chef.
Marc Rust [00:24:54]:
I make a piece of art. That's great, but you're never going to make a million dollars.
Craig Anderson [00:24:58]:
Yeah, yeah, I'm selling out if I do that.
Marc Rust [00:25:01]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:25:01]:
It's much harder to build that. It's the hardest part, the idea is hard, and I don't want to diminish that. Right. The entrepreneurial idea generator is a hard thing.
Marc Rust [00:25:10]:
Yes.
Craig Anderson [00:25:10]:
And you've got to get to that and get what you need. But then those next steps, to start scaling that to where it's a business that's not all about you, that it's a business that can run without you, that's the harder thing. Because that means I have to cast a vision that's really clear. I have to define how we do things and how we don't do things. I have to define what success criteria are. I have to decide how we show everyone, how we prioritize. Because when I can actually create that through my business, that's when I can go away for two weeks on vacation and come back to something that's not on fire. And that's really hard.
Marc Rust [00:25:43]:
It is, and you have to figure it out. To me, that's what's fun about it, you know, and figuring it out is talking to people, going out of your comfort zone. Find a mentor if you can, but ask questions, ask how people. How they did stuff. Be interested, take the class, get the.
Craig Anderson [00:25:59]:
Coach, find the mentor.
Marc Rust [00:26:00]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:26:00]:
And whenever you hear people, I'm sure when you were reading Branson's book, I'm sure at some point he went to a whole lot of people and said, how do I do this? How do I do that? I mean, heck, Steve Jobs tells a story. God, who was. He reached out to some big computer company when he was, like, a teenage kid and asked for parts, and he got them, right. He picks up phone calls again, gets the stuff. But I'm sure that guy became a mentor to him through every step of his early career that showed him how to do things. Because Jobs, right, if you just look at him, right, he knew how to scale something. He knew how to create a vision, hold standards, and then let that thing grow.
Marc Rust [00:26:35]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:26:36]:
And it's hard. It's really hard, or we'd all be billionaires.
Marc Rust [00:26:39]:
It's hard. But I think that the secret to me is initiative and audacity. Steve Jobs had the audacity to call up the owner of Hewlett-Packard, found his number in the phone book and called him up. It's like sending the letter to Richard Branson. It's easier to think, oh, he'll never get it. Don't do that. It's a waste of time. That's easy, right? It's hard to actually do it when you realize that just doing it is something that very few people do, and there's actually a way in you can learn from that.
Craig Anderson [00:27:12]:
The stories we tell ourselves that stop us from actually achieving what we want to do.
Marc Rust [00:27:16]:
Oh, it's insane.
Craig Anderson [00:27:17]:
Yeah, it is insane. So, Marc, last question for you. If you could jump into a time machine, I don't know if you're a H.G. Wells guy, a DeLorean guy. You pick your time machine. You could go back to young Marc in one of those early leadership roles. What's the one piece of advice you would give him that would make him more comfortable, more calm, more confident at that stage in his journey?
Marc Rust [00:27:40]:
First off, the time machine itself. I'd like it to be something that I was not expecting. It's a cardboard box, and you walk out and you're like, what the.
Craig Anderson [00:27:48]:
Oh, the Calvin and Hobbs model? I love it.
Marc Rust [00:27:50]:
Maybe, yeah. Or, I don't know. You just walk through a door, something happens, and you have to figure it out. That would be really cool. I would say don't be afraid. I think that fear is the thing that holds us back the most. You only regret what you don't do in life. It's not like you're going to be at the end of your life, on your deathbed and be like, I'm so glad I didn't try to start a company, or I'm so glad I didn't go skydiving.
Marc Rust [00:28:15]:
The hard things should be done.
Craig Anderson [00:28:18]:
Yeah. Love it.
Marc Rust [00:28:19]:
You don't regret what you do, regret what you don't do. And it's easier said than done. Okay, I understand that. I would also encourage myself to figure out how to finish things. So much of us start things and we don't finish. Do you know the number of people, myself included, who are writing a book? It's easy to start writing a book. Everybody can start writing a book. Finishing a book is really hard.
Craig Anderson [00:28:42]:
That's okay.
Craig Anderson [00:28:43]:
Yeah.
Craig Anderson [00:28:44]:
100.
Marc Rust [00:28:44]:
So, yeah. And then, I don't know, can I keep on going? I would say don't waste time on social media. You know, that kind of stuff.
Craig Anderson [00:28:51]:
Yeah, well, there's all that. But I think don't be afraid and finish what you start. Those are huge, especially when we've got a million things hitting us at our early stages. So, Marc, this is great. If people want to find you, connect with you, learn more about you, what are the best ways for them to do that?
Marc Rust [00:29:06]:
You can just Google my name, Marc Rust. Marc with a C, please. You can check out our company, consequentlycreative.com. and of course, I'm on LinkedIn and on Instagram and all that stuff.
Craig Anderson [00:29:18]:
Perfect. Well, Marc, thank you so much for coming on and sharing the story of your Executive Evolution. Appreciate it.
Marc Rust [00:29:23]:
You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Fantastic.
Craig Anderson [00:29:28]:
Boy, I really enjoyed that interview with Marc. He and I worked together many years ago and our careers have gone in very different directions. All good and all positive, but it was great to have an opportunity to catch up. As always, I like to talk about what I took away from the interview and the three areas of confidence, confidence and calm, which I think are key areas for us to be successful leaders. In the area of competence, I loved what Marc said is about his definition of leadership is turning people into doers. That's a high level of competence. We can have a lot in our head about how we want things to be and where we want our team to go, but if we can't translate that into language that our teammates can understand so they can carry that vision forward, we've really failed. We teach them how to become doers and executors of our vision, so that's really how we start to display our leadership competence.
Craig Anderson [00:30:17]:
In the area of competence, I don't know much about Richard Branson. Obviously nobody owns. But some of the stories Marc shared, that idea of just go, just dive in, take that step. It's so important for all of us in our leadership journeys to take the best information that we have in the time and step into it. And that's the lesson that Marc shared with us. And that does take a lot of leadership confidence for us to do. And then finally, in the area of calm, it's kind of related. But don't be afraid.
Craig Anderson [00:30:46]:
Just do. We can spend a lot of our time worrying if we've got all our I's dotted and t's crossed, and that can really get us torqued up. But if we want to be successful as leaders, we need to take that breath, take that moment of peace, and just don't be afraid and go for it. So, Marc, thank you for sharing the story of your Executive Evolution. As always, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is developing your competence, confidence, and calm. See you next time on Executive Evolution.