Welcome back to Incorporating SuperPowers. I am Justin Recla. And folks, I got to tell you today’s conversation with my guest Warren Rustand. He is going to be one that I think is going to give you some insight as to how to really grow your business, how to scale your business, and how to look at business through a different lens. Warren’s done a thing or two. He’s an executive chairman. He mentors 40 different CEOs and he’s focused on helping CEOs scale and grow their business fast.
But more importantly, Warren is also a father of seven children. He’s got 19 grandkids and he’s a Vietnam-era veteran of the army. And I think for that purpose alone, I think we’re going to have some really, really unique conversations. The title of his book is The Leader Within Us. We’re going to dive into what the subtitle of that book is here in just a second because it really plays into our conversation today. And it’s really kind of been with the theme as far as conversations I continue to have on the interviews I have coming up today.
But first and foremost, Warren, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your service in the army and thank you for not leaving it when you signed off and exited the military, but continued your drive to help others moving forward. Thank you for being here today.
Justin, thanks a lot for having me as your guest, and thank you for your service. I understand what you have done in the area in which you have expertise. And I really appreciate that and the service that you’ve rendered. More importantly, I know many of your listeners and they really appreciate what you offer them on a regular basis that helps them grow and develop. Thanks a lot for what you’re doing, Justin.
Absolutely. I’m excited about this conversation, Warren. The military background in itself is huge. The fact that you’ve been in the corporate sector for so long, the vast amount of experience that you bring to the business world is not to be ignored. And I think your book, The Leader Within Us, will have a lot of useful information for people to glimpse and take and learn and grow from as they build their businesses. Tell me more about the subtitle of your book.
Well, the subtitle obviously is this notion that using tools and principles and techniques that we can learn and base our activities on very specific principles that we can in fact emerge as a leader.
And while they may not be as the world would recognize and honor, we can be a leader in our family. We can be a leader in our business, a leader in our community, our neighborhood. There are a lot of ways to be leaders. If we’ll just base our activities on our thoughts around very specific and those principles are easily understood. They’ve been around forever, but they’re expressed differently in this book. And I think it’s a prescription for one to emerge as a much stronger leader in the various areas of their life. Living a life by design, Justin, of really determining what outcomes we want to have and then go after those outcomes. I think once we get that clarity we’re really in good shape.
I have to agree. And I know from my own experience. Mindset and looking at yourself through a different lens from a higher perspective is the fastest and easiest way to get there. And I think part of the problem with business today is too many people are focused on what’s in it for them as opposed to what’s in it for the client, right? It’s chasing fame, chasing the dream, thinking that if you make enough money you’re going to end up on the beach, drinking a Mai Tai, and that’s going to make you happy. And I think at this point, it’s fair enough to say for those listeners that are listening to the show that you understand that I made it very clear that that’s not the purpose of the show, that’s not the purpose of business. The purpose of business is to help other people.
So Warren, talk to me a little bit about your journey through that process of how did you remove yourself from it? How did you focus on being able to do what you do? I mean, you’re mentoring 40 CEOs. Folks, that’s not a light task. What was that journey like for you?
Well, I think the first thing I learned early on, I grew up very poor on a farm in Minnesota near the Canadian border. And my dad taught me the first-grade lesson, which is the first principle in my book, which is clarity of vision. It’s to be able to look forward and have that almost out-of-body experience to say, “What do I want my outcomes to be? Where am I going? What’s the distant landmark against which I’m going to measure my progress? How clear can I see that?” My dad would step back before he would start his tractor, that big old John Deere to plow that field, he would step back and he would verbalize and I’d just be standing there as a five, six-year-old. He’d say now, “What do I want this field to look like? What do I want the outcome to be? How precise should it be? Should I plow East to West, North to South? Should I start here or there? Should I open the field in this way?” So when he did start the tractor, he had a very clear view of what he was going to accomplish and do.
And that taught me a great lesson early in life about the fact that we can determine the outcomes that we want to have to a large extent if we’ll take time and space to actually do the planning and get the clarity of vision. One of the great things that have helped me through my life has been that every lesson I learned from my dad on that farm in Minnesota, about stepping back when I get an assignment, whether that’s in the military, it was at the White House, wherever it happened to be, and determine what is it I want to have happened in this process and what outcome do I want to have at the end? And then I can drive toward that and I can have a sense of accomplishment when I get there.
I love it. Absolutely love it. That right there folks, to put it into language that you’re probably familiar with hearing here on the show, that’s leaning into something bigger than yourself. Because the only way you can get perspective, that clarity, is you have to step outside of the box of what you’re trying to view things and it only comes from that space of being able to see that. You have to take yourself out of it, you had to look at the bigger picture, and in order for you to see what you actually have to focus on. I love this concept of that journey and I love the fact that you were able to carry those stories and those lessons forward from your father and share it with the world. I would ask what led to the writing of the book?
Well, a lot of people have been after me for many, many years, including Forbes and Advantage Books and others to write down these lessons that I have spoken about for years all around the world. And there are tens of thousands of people who are living their lives differently as a result of just suggesting some of these principles to them. And as a result of that urging, I put it off as long as I could, and finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll write the book.” And Forbes came to me and was very interested in doing that in collaboration with Advantage Books. And as a result, the book is now out. It’s about our mindset. It’s about deciding what it is we want to be and what we want to become, and then applying those principles. And when we use those principles, we tend to drive toward the outcomes we have.
Now, the same thing is true when we help people scale companies. We’ve had an opportunity to scale multiple companies and take several public for example. And as a result of that, we’ve had a chance to really step back and think about what it takes to scale a company? How do we do that rapidly? Everybody wants to do that in business, but how do we do that? And while we’re doing that, how do we impact those communities in which we serve? How do we help marginalized communities and marginalized people get their chance in life? How do we have a higher purpose? And I believe there is a higher purpose and I believe we’re all called to a higher purpose and it’s our job to discern what that is. And I believe we have every opportunity to do that in every phase of our life.
I agree. Folks we’re going to dive down the rabbit hole a little bit more right after our break. But before we go on break, Warren, where can people go find more information about you?
At the warrenrustand.com website. I’ve got episodes on Facebook there. Speeches, ideas and thoughts, and of course, the book, The Leader Within Us.
Fantastic. Folks stay tuned, we’ll be right back.
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